


A Dream that Grasps

by ka_tsu_ra



Category: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, Super Sentai Series
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-04-06 03:46:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 71,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4206765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ka_tsu_ra/pseuds/ka_tsu_ra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The fall of the Red Pirates. When you get right down to it, that was all on me.”<br/>A plot to resurrect the fallen empire inadvertently revives a threat at once familiar and all too personal. One with its sights on Earth - and more - and no interest in trading that glory to any empire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This may be the last time I put my notes at the start of a chapter, but I thought it would be appropriate to explain my categorizations before you read further. I've classified this as an M/M story not because romance is the point but because I didn't want to check 'gen' and surprise people looking for something without hugs and kisses, of which this has several. There are pairs present besides Joe and Marvelous, but seeing as they're the central POV characters I wasn't sure if I should tag any of the others. There's stuff for you here if you like Gai/Don and Luka/Ahim, but I didn't want to get your hopes up for a lot of it by tagging it.
> 
> That's all! I hope you enjoy this! Notes will come at the end from now on unless there's super important info.
> 
> EDIT: Looks like the separating lines got eaten by the WYSIWYG. Thanks. AO3, you flawless imitation of a working website.

The duty of waking Marvelous up, even on normal days when laziness alone knocked him out in his chair or up in the crow's nest, almost exclusively fell to Joe. Navi could withstand getting hucked across the room, but she didn't have Joe's effectiveness. Joe could wake him quietly, which Ahim assured him was an admirable skill.

Marvelous had stopped taking his irregular naps on the bridge. He'd retreat to his cabin under the pretense of doing some vague 'work,' and emerge again hours later with pillow creases in his face. Gai had suggested that - at least on that day, as they all chattered and busied themselves readying for an expedition planet-side - it was just too noisy to nap on the bridge some days. That was true enough, but Joe knew better for being the one to always slip in and bring him around. When Marvelous did sleep, at least in the past couple weeks, he didn't sleep well.

More than once, Joe had come in on him with his face pinched up and the fingers on his right hand twitching and flexing, his whole body tense with garbled panic signals from his sleeping brain. The day they began their descent to that nameless planet at the rim of the galaxy wasn't any different.

The first few times, Joe had approached his sleeping friend with the same slow and broad and deliberate motions one uses when confronting an unfamiliar dog. Now, though, he crossed the room in quick strides and filled Marvelous' restless hand with his own and he squeezed. Whatever Marvelous was grasping for, it wasn't here. Joe was here, and that brought him awake without the usual snapping or thrashing that would send Gai fleeing or Navi flying out into the corridor. He came awake with a hissing intake of breath that knocked the tension out of his limbs, shook his head like a drenched dog, and sat up. He always looked over Joe's shoulder, at the door. Joe never bothered to ask; he knew Marvelous had to be sure it was shut.

"We're getting ready to disembark." There wasn't any point in asking if Marvelous was all right, seeing as his answers only ranged as far as 'Of course,' and 'Shut up.' Instead, he let his hand slip free and stepped back so Marvelous could do his best to spring out of bed. He was still dressed, boots and all. Gai would be appalled. "You're sure Doc doesn't need you up here?"

Marvelous scoffed and turned his head hard to one side. His neck made a sound like wet gravel underfoot and Joe grimaced. "As if I'd miss out." He stepped around Joe and swept his coat off the chair before his desk. The desk itself was more a permanent art fixture than functional furniture, a craggy landscape of plundered souvenirs and utilitarian items and certain precious things Joe had learned through painful trial and error he wasn't allowed to touch. "You can nanny me yourself while we're down there if you're so bent out of shape about me missing a little sleep."

"Two weeks of stealing three hours a day isn't missing a little sleep." Joe pointed this out as coolly as he could manage, tailing Marvelous into the corridor. "You're racking up a serious sleep debt."

"You think I haven't missed a lot more sleep for a lot better reasons before?" Marvelous didn't turn to speak to him. He did that sometimes, threw out some scrap from his life before Joe as an illustration of just how little even Joe was allowed to know about him. "I can handle myself. I know you've got my back, but the going forward I can usually manage on my own.”

Joe didn't believe him, but he didn't want to start the expedition with a bloody nose either.

A familiar chaos greeted them on the bridge that served double duty as their common room. In fairness to the others, Gai was the epicenter and instigator of most of the horseplay. While Ahim and Luka took turns ticking off equipment lists, Gai flitted around the room waxing nostalgic about summer and cicadas and wading through rivers. He had dressed for their excursion in a garish button up shirt and cargo pants that made his legs look like matchsticks. He'd somehow become more embarrassing than usual to behold.

"What! Don-san, you've really never been camping?" He hovered around poor Doc - who'd tried to take refuge with his toolbox under the ship's console - like a lamprey that was still struggling to work out its purpose in life.

"I- Well." Doc tried to sit up straight and only banged his head on the underside of the console. It took him a moment to recover. "I wouldn't call what I've had to do camping."

Gai's face fell and he released a characteristic wail. "That's right! Ah, I'm so sorry." He dropped down beside Doc, and Joe couldn't tell if he was bowing or trying to get on Doc's level to appear more sincere. Either way, it looked ridiculous. "Camping and not having a home are different."

Marvelous put an end to the display by striding over and dragging Gai back up by the collar of his shirt. Gai didn't resist, letting himself be pulled along like a cat grasped by the scruff of its neck. "Enough chatter, we're not going on some stupid camping trip anyway."

"Close enough," Gai said. He pursed his lips and rubbed his neck where his collar had dug in. He brightened. "If we have to stay overnight, we'll be camping."

“It's a lot less fun if you don't have a choice,” Doc said.

“It is with your friends around!” Gai insisted, tearing out of Marvelous' grasp in a spinning flourish. “I was in the scouts as a kid, and-”

“Of course you were.” Marvelous caught Gai again, spun him around, and gave him a light kick to get him moving. “Go find the bird.”

Gai spun a few times, like an off-balance top, and bounded down the steps to the corridors beyond the common room. “Aye aye!” And then he was off, calling for Navi the whole way.

Sighing, Marvelous retired to his chair. Joe couldn't blame him for chasing Gai off, seeing as he found Gai exhausting even on a full night's rest. There were other reasons that Marvelous wouldn't admit or accept, of course, like the way Gai loudly and insistently worried at him. If Gai wasn't around, Marvelous could slouch and nod and drag a little. He could stand worrying the others but Gai was too sunny and chatty to take his captain's discomfort in a way that didn't cause him immediate, noisy distress. Joe, by contrast, worried very quietly and expressed it by standing off to the side of the captain's chair to keep watch.

“It's not exactly like we gotta go anyway,” Luka said once Gai's cries had died down to a distant din. She whipped an apple from the fruit bowl on their coffee table at Joe's head. He caught it without a thought.

“Already told you, it's preventative measures,” Marvelous said. When Joe offered him the apple, he took and gnashed into it without thanks or grace. He wasn't too changed from his normal self, thankfully. “If there's a cup that holds the key to great power or whatever here, we might as well take care of it before any delusional imperialists get wind of it.”

“A cup or a spring,” Doc put in, rising from behind the console. “Or a well. The texts, from what I could translate, were euphemistic and maybe not the most clear. It's a trait of the language, probably, but seeing as it's technically a dead language we'll never be sure.”

Ahim made a small, thoughtful sound and crossed the room to one of the portholes. “That is not entirely the most helpful information, but I suppose we shall make the most of it.”

“Right, and if you think about it a well or a spring's a lot easier to find than a cup.” Every plosive sound from Marvelous' mouth sent a little spatter of apple juice ghosting over Joe's hand.

“Yeah, but what are we going to do with a well?” Joe asked, wiping his hand on the front of his shirt. On a normal day he'd slap Marvelous upside the head with his sticky hand. “You can't just smash that, unlike a cup.”

Marvelous shrugged. “Dunno. Kill the monster at the bottom? We'll figure it out. We always do.”

Joe hummed, Doc fidgeted, and Luka joined Ahim at the porthole.

“It really is a lovely little green planet,” Ahim said dreamily.

Luka leaned against the bulkhead, peering out with practiced disinterest. “Yeah, lovely and empty. Makes you wonder where everybody went.”

Doc hung back on the Galleon to run maintenance, something that Navi – despite having some requisite knowledge – couldn't do without thumbs. He would remain on standby and keep watch over the immediate area, but Joe didn't consider the auxiliary member of their team a fair trade for Doc. Rappelling down to an unfamiliar planet with one less Gokaiger had him on edge before his feet hit the ground.

The planet was as Ahim had described it, lovely and green. The clearing that served as their touchdown point was wreathed all around by trees and creepers so thick and tall that they gave the impression of a distant green canyon wall. Under his boots, the ground gave like a firm sponge. The air smelled thickly of warm rain just passed.

“Uwah, it's like a rainforest!” Gai was an explosion of noise behind him, and the beside him, and then muscling up to the front of the group. “Man, I'm glad my Cellular can take pictures.”

Marvelous had Gai by the scruff again before he could steal the captain's place at the front of their procession. He yanked Gai back and Luka stepped aside to let him take her place as second in the lineup. Joe stepped around them all to stand beside Marvelous, who had given up on chastising Gai in favor of slowly unfolding his copy of their map. He first held it backward, and then upside down.

“Perhaps it would be best to accomplish our goals before we set to sightseeing,” Ahim said, regarding the expanse of treeline nearest them. “After all, that would free up our time to... go camping?”

“Yeah!” Luka leaned into Ahim, grinning, and Joe had to wonder if she was playing up her enthusiasm for Ahim and Gai's sakes the way Marvelous sent Gai to look for Navi.

“Work first, campfire stories later.” Marvelous snapped the paper in his hands and started for the trees. Joe kept close to his side in case drowsiness and the heels of his boots in the soft soil unbalanced him.

They penetrated the treeline without incident, though Gai's enthusiasm did dwindle the further they hiked. The trees packed tightly around them on all sides and jutting mossy roots threatened to catch unwary feet. All around was a silence anyone not accustomed to the remote outdoors might call absolute. Gai's time playing around in the woods as a child hadn't prepared him, obviously. Then again, Ahim certainly looked at ease. She moved light and quick through the growth and over the roots and fallen trunks, even in her skirt. Maybe there was some deeply ingrained distrust of deep, green wilderness in the Earthling psyche. For Joe, this wasn't so bad.

The pack on Joe's back was a comforting, familiar weight. It was lighter than the one he'd hauled up mountain ranges during survival training but present enough to take some part of him back to those days. The times he shared with Sid and the others in their unit hadn't been perfect – they had been predicated on a terrible, all-encompassing lie, even – but many of them were happy and simple in a way he couldn't full appreciate at the time. The small sounds of boughs creaking overhead and little unseen things moving through the foliage brought the part of him he'd all but shed the day Sid died back to those times, if only briefly.

When the inevitable happened and Marvelous pitched forward beside him, Joe was ready. He snapped a hand out and caught him by the arm to haul him upright. It was all automatic. He didn't even feel his expression shift.

Marvelous muttered his thanks and kicked the root that tripped him as if that would make him look less ridiculous. Navi buzzed his head.

“Marvelous! I know you're tired, but you can't take a nap in the woods, sleepyhead.” She sounded her tinny laugh and circled his and Joe's heads.

“Bird!” Marvelous lashed a hand out at her and she spiraled up out of his reach, cackling.

“Too bad you were so generous when we left Earth. I bet Jetman could catch me easy!”

“You gotta land sometime!”

Joe let himself smile. Even if Marvelous was rapidly expending his energy reserves it was a relief to see him springing around after Navi. He was a flitting splash of red against the green, all lively and loud like he ought to be. The others watched, too, and it was Gai who swooped in to catch Marvelous when he lost his footing again making a dive for Navi. Marvelous shrugged him off and everyone but Marvelous laughed.

Then a reverberating rasp cut through the trees. It was like countless voices sighing through tight throats, and it rolled over them like a wave from the east. The laughter bled out of them instantly. They all came to cluster with Marvelous at the center, as they always did, and Mobirates and GokaiCellular at the ready.

A horde of _things_ came roiling out from the spaces between the trees. They weren't Gormin, they weren't soldiers, but there was a uniformity to their silhouettes that brought to mind the association. Even if those silhouettes rippled and writhed as they moved, as if loose rubbery fibers composed their limbs and trunks.

Marvelous spoke first. “Bird, go tell Doc there's trouble down here!”

Then, they all called out in unison. “GokaiChange!”

Gai dove into the fracas first and brought down two in a long swipe. Not bad, but he'd be hacking them down for a while without help. What they lacked in strength, they compensated for in numbers.

Joe moved with Marvelous into the whirl of strange bodies. They were lanky, sinuous things the color of clay that sprang and lurched around as if boneless. The flat, blank plates in place of their faces swiveled and jerked to follow Joe's eyes – not his body or his face – wherever he moved. Each time he cut one down, it collapsed and unwound with the same rasp that had preceded the things' coming.

Boneless, faceless, voiceless. Weak though they were, they were terrible and numerous.

When Marvelous strayed from him and left his back open to one of the things, Joe leaped to slash it away. His blade swiped clean through the cords that made up its chest, but not before it snapped out at him and wrapped its too-long fingers around his outstretched arm.

_'Run!'_

Joe screamed and didn't know why. The need to run, the equally powerful want to stay and prevent some unknown terrible happening, both these things struck him so hard from inside that he reeled back into Marvelous.

It was gone as soon as it came, the monster spooling away to nothing on the ground and the world around him in the sharp, clear focus of presence. He cut a wide swath through their numbers out of spite, and when they touched him again as he mowed his way through them he felt nothing.

Navi returned when half the horde remained, though not with Doc. She stayed well above the calamity, calling the same message over and over to the dispersed pirates.

“There's a Zangyack ship tucked up ninja-style under the canopy a half a kilometer from here! East! Probably explains these weirdos!”

When her words reached Marvelous and Joe, the former was off like a shot. “I'll go ahead! Catch up when you can!”

Joe snarled at Marvelous' back as it bounded between the trees, and Gai swept over to clear the line of creatures encroaching on him. He pressed up on Joe's shoulder and gave an affirmative nod of solidarity before Joe shoved him away.

“Gai, follow Marvelous.”

“But-” Gai ducked a swing from one of the creatures, and Joe jabbed it away.

“In his absence, I give orders. We'll catch up, but don't let him go alone.”

He could practically hear Gai swallow through his helmet. “Right.”

* * *

 

Marvelous funneled his consciousness into the physical. His heartbeat, the snap and swing of his legs and hips, the weight of the saber in his hand, pointed awareness of these things and more could keep him upright and balanced and moving.

His lungs burned – considering the humidity, maybe they boiled. Even transformed, keeping his footing and his breath at a full sprint proved difficult. He'd need sleep soon, real sleep. Not that he hadn't been trying.

There was no point pausing to investigate or confront the pounding and crashing trailing behind him. If he'd managed to draw some of those wriggling freaks away from the others, all the better. He could handle it. If he kept his mind in his body and not in his brain, he could handle it. Duck the branches, launch over the mossy hulks of long-dead trees, leap streams. If he could do these things, he could handle this.

He didn't count on a frontal assault. They sprang out from the underbrush, rising up like unfurling fern fronds, the instant he touched down on the bank of the sluggish stream. Because his mind was in his body, he bounded forward and swung out with his saber. They were flimsy as moldering bread; he had no reason to hesitate.

One of the nearest things dispelled that notion with a simple touch. Its lanky fingers folded over his shoulder, springy fingertips digging in and bruising the flesh underneath his suit. The touch pulled his mind out of his body and sent it rocketing back home.

_'And just what are you doing in here, sneakthief?'_

Marvelous didn't make a sound. His throat sealed itself, an ingrained defense mechanism. The same mechanisms couldn't keep him from sinking to his knees; he'd already diverted his limited energy stores to smothering the scream. That he held his transformation on the way to the ground was a miracle.

He curled in. His mind reeled too fast to process any single thought individually. They all whirled together, hot and clinging and blinding bright. His heart beat faster than his lungs could pull in oxygen. His head swam. Long hands scrabbled at his back, pawed at his arms, tried to drag him. He couldn't make his limbs cooperate to slash or kick them away.

How far did they drag him before Gai came blazing in? He was wet and sore and shaking, still, when the flash of Gai's spear cut through the dark of his eyelids and called him to open his eyes. Half the monsters juddered and staggered back, uncoiling and falling to nothing. The others forgot Marvelous and lunged for Gai, only to be cut down on the second arcing pass of the spear.

The last one took hold of Gai's neck and Gai, unaffected, gutted it.

And Marvelous was still shaking.

Gai left the last monster to unspool itself to death – or what counted for death – and came to crouch on one knee beside Marvelous. The forest around them was quiet again. “You okay?”

“I'm fine.” Marvelous wished he could see Gai's eyes, wished he could get a better read on just how much pity he only imagined in his voice. “Why'd you follow? Where are the others?”

“Joe-san sent me.” Gai said. He looped an arm gingerly under Marvelous' and tugged up on him. “You don't look fine.”

Marvelous straightened up and slipped his arm free. “I'm tired. Forget it.

“Are you sur-”

Marvelous mashed his open palm into the face of Gai's helmet. “I'm sure. I'm fine.”

Even if his head swam and his stomach churned, he had no real choice but to be fine.

“Do you hear that?” In his sleep-deprived state, Marvelous had forgot that a hand on his helmet wouldn't prevent Gai from talking. Not that much could.

Marvelous listened. When the haze around his brain cleared he could make out a distant sonorous tone out of place in the deep forest.

“You hear it, right? I'm not going bonkers?”

Marvelous nodded. “Yeah.” He swung his saber and started off at a jog. “Care to investigate?”

“You bet!”

Neither realized they'd fallen into following the path marked out on the map until Marvelous found himself with no ground to run on. He went skidding down the rocky lip of the massive sinkhole that the trees and underbrush had obscured, then toppling down in the open air. He let out a shout that rang off the far walls, spinning head over feet once before Gai, who'd leaped in after him, caught him up in his arms and legs and made sure that they both cannonballed their way to the surface of the water below.

They hit the water with a smack that resounded through the cavernous space. The impact knocked all the air out of Marvelous. Gai dredged him up by the collar of his coat before he could cough and replace it with water.

Gai spewed out a long arc of water and grinned at him. If having his transformation knocked out bothered him, he was doing a good job of hiding it. “You almost sleepwalked yourself off the plank, captain!”

“Shaddup.” Marvelous pushed him away and tried to find the bottom with his feet. The water was deep and cold and smelled of minerals he couldn't identify. It shone a lustrous green in the harsh sunlight streaming down from the sinkhole's gaping mouth. Craning his head around, he noted that the sheer stone walls would present a significant challenge if they meant to reach the surface again. Luka had the climbing stuff.

A warm tone – many voices raised, harmonious – rolled into the chamber. They both whipped around. The sound, subdued compared to the chorus in the forest, issued from an opening in the rock. The surface may have to wait.

Gai got to swimming first. “So, investigate?”

“Yeah.” Marvelous kicked after him, smiling his mad smile. It was easier to be fine with a mystery at hand and the dangling promise of Zangyack heads to crack. Gai's presence didn't hurt. He had a certain buoying quality even at his most aggravating, and his hero worship – as much as time and close quarters had mellowed it – was adequate incentive to keep it together.

They crept low and slow through the tunnel, feeling along with their hands to the walls when they lost the residual light from the sinkhole. They walked abreast, toward the sound, into the sound. It flowed around them like the deep, opaque water in the sinkhole. It was a straight shot, and after many minutes of blind shuffling they sighted fresh light ahead. It flashed, flickered, and finally solidified at the far end of the tunnel, burning sulfur flame blue.

The droning chant ceased and Marvelous threw and arm out to still Gai, and Gai created a wet splat walking into his back instead.

“Watch it,” Marvelous hissed. “And listen.”

“-resurrection of our glorious Empire. It is to this end that we call upon you!” A single voice, old and worn and all but swallowed by the caves, rose where the chanting had died.

They moved again, toward the light and the voice. Marvelous' heart pounded. He didn't have to tell Gai to be quiet. They were both listening to that voice.

“I hear you in my mind; I hear you and you demand an equal trade for your assistance. We offer only everything. We can take you from this empty place and lay the universe at your feet.”

Gai nudged him, and in the gathering light Marvelous could see worry creasing his face. He offered his own mad grin as a silent reassurance.

The sight that awaited them at the tunnel's end was no average meeting of imperial conspirators. Scores of the writhing things from the forest milled around the vast, vaulted limestone chamber only yards from the tunnel opening from which the pirates observed, pressed flat to the tunnel's wall. The things mingled with imperial officers and Gormin alike. Whatever was going down, it needed serious security.

The main attraction, though, rose above the rabble at the farthest end of the cavern. Steps cut into the stone terminated in a flat slab, like an altar, under which the blue flames that painted the room lashed and licked in unnatural silence. Their light wrapped dully around the gathered officers and flashed off the hard, glossy skin of the looming figure at the center of the platform.

It was tall and hunched and twisted, too thin and too long in every way. It had the same lanky fingers and twisted appearance as the grasping forest things, but its skin glinted like black glass splintered at its joints. Its empty face reflected the light like a looking glass, throwing the beam around as it swayed and rocked on its sinuous legs.

The light fell on them and its swiveling head stilled.

The droning man at the foot of the stairs went silent. Sound died for a full second, and in the next instant the whole security force came down on them. The flash of Gai's transformation washed the blue out of the room for an instant, but Marvelous instinctively recoiled when the things reached for him. He felt sick at himself and tried to wind that up into anger, into action, but he couldn't.

Instead, he watched Gai stand as a whirling sentry at the mouth of the tunnel. Their touch did nothing and they fell easily, but Gai was only one man.

“Come on, Marvelous!”

He stood, even with the ground pulling at him. Not in years had he been so keenly aware of gravity. The sick feeling swam in a pipeline between his head and his guts and he wavered on his feet. The world gnashed and swirled around him. He recognized the process distantly. His body was trying to crash. Only barked words from the altar held his head above the metaphorical water.

“Forget the empty fool, he's worthless! Bring the little red one!”

Before Marvelous could react, two sets of pawing arms darted through Gai's defenses and brought him tearing and hollering out of the tunnel. Their comrades made a wall around him as they dragged him through the assembled Zangyack loyalists. Marvelous thrashed and tore at them, trying in vain to get both hands free fast enough to transform. Their touch didn't affect them as it had the first time, but fatigue and panic could be just as debilitating.

“Marvelous-san!”

Gai's voice cut through the clamor, and Marvelous didn't need his voice ringing through the cavern to explain the looks of smug recognition he caught on the faces of officers they passed on their way up to the steps.

On the altar, Marvelous played the indignant prisoner, smirking even as the attendant Gormin guards shoved him onto his knees. The gnarled thing creaked when it bent to his level, its black mirror face swiveling and jerking on a boneless neck. It offered a dim, desaturated reflection of his bedraggled face.

“Does this one satisfy you?” the officer who spoke to and for the thing called from his place at the foot of the stairs. “Is this one useful?”

That featureless face loomed nearer and the reflection of Marvelous' face flickered away. It turned dull, swallowing the light instead of reflecting it.

Marvelous smirked. “I'd say you're real ugly, but you haven't got a fa-”

It swung a heavy hand up from where it dragged on the floor and grasped his throat. The splintered glass tips of its fingers threatened to break the skin over the bend in his jaw. He stilled and waited for the panic to come again. It didn't. Instead, it was as if something bled out of him where the thing's cold, plated flesh met his. Fatigue flowed into the spaces it left behind. His body started to slump, and the thing began to change.

It crumpled in on itself, folding down smaller and smaller, crackling and throwing glittering splinters to chatter on the stone below.

It pulled more, draining him like a deep wound. What it took, it rearranged into a smaller, suppler body that stooped rather than loomed over him.

Limbs rippled and smoothed in the light, the reflections no longer harsh. The finger pads on Marvelous' jaw were soft, though they dug in just as hard.

His body slumped, his gaze dropped to the floor. He couldn't bear to look up. The panic bloomed in him again. His breath was hot on pale, chilled lips.

Voices raised all around them as the battle picked up. Gai must have been doing well, but Marvelous could hardly parse the sounds. Half of him was elsewhere.

Fingers caught his chin again and jerked his head around. He would be made to look.

“What a shame. I'd thought you would surprise me by getting taller again.” A smirk on a face too despised and familiar to be mistaken. The fingers curled in and tucked nails into his skin. “Marvey.”

A hail of rounds fired from the other end of the cavern peppered the altar. The percussive startle tore Marvelous' mind away from those fingers and that face and threw it hard into the core of his body. He tore away and went staggering back – one step, two steps, then tipping violently backward onto-

“Idiot!”

Marvelous didn't have to see Joe's eyes behind the helmet to know he was good and mad. Those same eyes wouldn't be directed at him anyway. Gokai Blue looked forward and up. His gloved fingers dug into Marvelous' arms and his entire body was a taut line of unreleased tension.

Where Marvelous was afraid, Joe was furious.

Fury couldn't override practicality. Marvelous, with no choice left in his drained body, let Joe dash down the stairs with him half dragged behind once he tore his attention away from-

From the thing at the top of the stairs. That's all it was. That's all it could be.

Still-

“Gai, fall back! We have to get Marvelous out of here.”

Clangor and clamor swallowed Gai's reply and fatigue muddled their flight into the tunnel. When they cleared the blue light and found darkness again, Marvelous tried to stand. Joe let him stagger along beside him while Gai brought up the rear, ready for any pursuit. None came. They reached the rocky subterranean shore – and the sunlight and the Galleon hovering above – far quicker than expected.

Marvelous collapsed.

 


	2. Chapter 2

_'And just what are you doing in here, sneakthief?'_

_'Hey, lemme go, your hands are all gross!'_

_'No quarry for thieves!'_

_'I didn't even take anything yet!'_

_'Yeah, yet!'_

_The galley was bright and warm and full of the yeast-sour smell of bread in the making._

_No. He couldn't be here. He had to be somewhere closer, somewhere darker, somewhere angrier. Somewhere he wasn't._

_Somewhere he was dead._

_He couldn't pull himself so far, only as far as the floor of his cabin. Since when was he propped up against his door? Marvelous didn't remember getting up, but the door was cool and he was so, so hot. Weird, his foot hurt less than expected. The deep bruise over his heart, that hurt almost as bad. The charm might've stopped the round, but it did a crappy job of dispersing the force behind it._

_He'd lost track of time while Doc treated him and he slipped in and out of sleep, but it must have been night. It was dark, after all, and dark meant night or space and they hadn't been to space for months._

_It was dark, but he could listen._

_'Aren't you gonna, y'know?'_

_'What?'_

_Voices outside, a little down the corridor. Gai, Joe._

_'Go talk to him.'_

_'He's fine.'_

_Gai was real sweet. Sometimes it got annoying. He still didn't know the score around here. He'd learn, probably._

_'But-'_

_'He needs rest more than he needs smalltalk. Let him be.'_

_'Talk to him after.'_

_'About what?'_

_'You know what!'_

_Gai knew, Joe might've known, but Marvelous didn't. Basco? That would be stupid. They'd talked when he was alive, now he was dead. It was simple._

_'Sorry, afraid I don't. Move.'_

_'Joe-san!'_

_Footsteps retreating. The rhythm was off. Too slow, irregular. Marvelous might not have called them footsteps if they didn't reverberate through the floor underneath him._

_It was dark. He was hot._

_Fever. That's right. That can happen when you're hurt real bad, idiot. Blood loss, stress, a hundred little places for infection to creep in. It was gonna be a rough night._

_Ah, well. It was worth it. If he never had to see Basco's face again – either face, any face – it was worth it._

_But he was so hot. Everything was. The heat in the air thickened and fell on him like water vapor coalescing into rain. It fell on his shoulders and sunk in deep._

_Black glass fingertips piercing his shirt, into the skin._

_Soft fingertips that somehow never calloused sinking in to wring the air out of his lungs, snagging on his battered ribs, dragging him down._

_And all so hot._

_So hot, so dark, and no air anywhere._

_This was bad._

_He could still feel the door, barely, could still hear and feel the hull blow footsteps._

“Joe.”

“Yes?” A warm hand whisked through his hair.

Marvelous' eyelids lifted and the darkness snapped out of existence. He was in the common room, on the couch. He wasn't hot. He wasn't torn apart and barely held together with bandages. He was just tired. Tired, breathless, heart beating so hard his ribs ached. Joe was at his side, crouched down a little too close to his face.

Joe's long fingers were tangled with his, squeezing tight. The pressure slowed his heart.

The bruise was long gone, his foot was whole and sound in spite of all Doc's fretting over all the little parts in it.

The others clustered behind Joe, looking on in various states of hand-wringing anxiety. Joe and poor Doc looked worst, but the thought that he'd worried any of them this much made Marvelous sick with anger at himself.

He tried to stand, but Joe laid a hand on his shoulder and eased him back down so that he sat propped up on the arm of the sofa “Stay. There's nothing we can do right now and you're a wreck.”

Doc stepped forward and pushed a cup of water and a pair of liquid capsules into his hands. Marvelous frowned at the offering.

“We have attempted the diplomatic approach to this problem,” Ahim said with a sage nod that Luka seconded. “It has failed.”

Marvelous rolled the pills in his hand and said nothing.

“It's a mild sedative to make you sleep,” Doc said. His expression hardened so dramatically that Marvelous might have laughed in any other situation. “And I'll hide it in your food if you don't take it.”

“Or I'll pin you and force feed it to you,” Joe put in. He couldn't match Doc's stern expression; anxiety crept in and softened the edges of his eyes. He saw. He must have seen, must have recognized that smug bastard's face.

Gai came skidding between them and Marvelous could hear the stretchy grin in his voice when he spoke to Joe. “Hey, hey, isn't that a bit much? Marvelous-san already isn't feeling well, right? Insomnia, y'know, it's a symptom of a lot of... bad... stuff.”

“Settle down, I'll take it.” Marvelous sat up and swept aside Gai, who went staggering into Doc. “Don't know what good it'll do.”

“No cheeking it.” Joe's characteristic impassive glower returned as he watched Marvelous swallow the pills and down the water.

Marvelous sighed and chucked the empty cup to Luka. “These dissolve too fast to make that worth the effort.” He pushed off the couch and ducked Joe's hand when he reached out to push him back down. “I wanna sleep in my bed if I'm gonna sleep.”

No one objected, but Joe tailed him down the steps and into the hall. He didn't say a word -and neither did Marvelous – until they reached the door to the captain's cabin.

“What was that back there?”

It was one of several dozen things Marvelous was in no mood to hear. Or to answer.

“Dunno.”

He opened the door, shut it, locked it, and waited with his back pressed to it. Rather than pound on the door, Joe retreated, his steps receding down the hall in the direction of the common room. Marvelous, satisfied he'd have his peace, settled at his desk.

Gai barred Joe's with outstretched arms and a scowl that practically elongated his chin. Joe stopped as a courtesy. He could move Gai if necessary.

“Do you need something?”

Gai shook his head hard and pulled his eyebrows into a determined little V. “Not me.”

“Then move.” Joe ducked under Gai's arm and around him, only to freeze when Gai next spoke.

“Go be with Marvelous-san.”

Joe turned, folded his arms over his chest. “Gai, he doesn't need a nanny to watch while he takes his nap.”

Gai made one of his all too precise flailing grabs for Joe's hand and got shoved several feet down the hall for it. This, of course, didn't deter him. He was on him again in an instant. “Joe-san, please go.”

“Gai, he needs sleep. If you're so worried, you go and-”

“He needs _you!_ ” The crackle in Gai's voice gave Joe pause, and they wound up watching each other in knowing silence for a long moment, Gai's words hanging in the air.

“Gai.” Joe took a long step toward him. Gai gulped and straightened up. “Back there in the cavern, what did you see?”

Gai paled and dropped his voice. “I saw him, if that's what you're asking about. Or, y'know, something like him. That's why I thought-”

“Like him?” Joe carried on down the corridor, headed for the engine room. Gai picked up the implicit command to follow instantly. The further they got from the others, the further they got from Marvelous' door, the easier this conversation could be.

“Yeah. If that was Basco for real there's a lot more weird stuff about him we didn't know.” Gai threw his arms up over his head and waggled his fingers. “Before you showed up, it was this big skinny thing with no face and crazy long arms and stuff. It was like-” He made a nonsense noise and rose up on the balls of his feet. It took the bulk of Joe's dwindling patience not to take the opportunity to slap him in the stomach. He didn't need a shadow puppet show on top of all this.

“And how did it get Marvelous?”

Gai deflated as they crossed into the engine room. His arms hung at his sides. “I'm sorry, Joe-san.” He looked like a kicked dog. “I failed at the mission you gave me.”

Joe sighed, confident the drone of the engines would drown it out. “He's alive. You succeeded.”

“Yeah, but we have him- That to deal with because of me.”

“I don't think that could've been helped. You did fine. You did what you could.”

“Yeah.” Gai leaned on one of the railings and stared at nothing. 

Joe shifted his weight from foot to foot and waited for Gai to speak again. “Gai. Did any of those monsters in the jungle touch you?”

Gai's head tipped to one side. “Touch me? Yeah, tons! That happens when you fight, right?”

“Usually.” Joe drew a breath and held it. He could place the voice commanding him to run, now. Run, run as far as you can for the rest of your life. Run until you eventually die knowing you did right as a citizen of the universe. His throat threatened to close, so he forced words through it. “Usually, it does. But those things, they grab you and you remember things.” That had to be it. It had happened to him. He'd seen it happen to Ahim when she intercepted a pack of the things converging on Luka. He'd seen, too, the way the attack could backfire when practiced on someone with Ahim's bloodthirsty approach to their greatest trauma. “It makes you remember the worst things.”

Gai's face fell and he covered his slack mouth with one hand. “Joe-san.”

“It's fine.” Joe puffed out a sigh and headed back out of the engine room. “I'm gonna make dinner tonight since Doc's tied up with research. I'll check on Marvelous after. Deal?”

“Deal.”

***

Marvelous wasn't asleep. He wasn't even in his room.

Hardly a surprise. Joe heaved a sigh and snatched the topmost blanket off the bed, folding it over one arm as he stepped out again. He didn't bother asking around for sightings or leads; Marvelous only kept one or two regular privacy spots outside his cabin. A long climb up steel rungs with the blanket draped over one shoulder brought him up to their captain's favorite sanctuary. The access hatch wasn't locked. Lucky. Sometimes it was.

He found Marvelous, still dressed as he'd left him after guiding him half awake through shucking off his wet clothes and trading them for fresh, leaning heavy on the rail of the crow's nest. The stars had just started to peek out overhead.

“Hey,” Joe said, softly.

Marvelous' reply came with significant lag. “Hey.”

“You're fighting the medicine Doc gave you, aren't you?” Joe tried to hand him the blanket only to wind up draping it around his shoulders himself when he didn't react. A shirt with no vest and no coat wouldn't do him any favors in the cutting night air.

“What if I am?” Marvelous wavered a bit and Joe pulled back on his shoulders. He didn't resist. He wore a languid, lopsided version of his usual careless smile. “These last, what, four hours? It's been two. I can wait.”

“Let's go back down, Marvelous.”

Marvelous shook his head like Joe knew he would. He wasn't supposed to accept that first hard offer. Joe made it only to sweeten the compromise.

“You can't be by the rail like that if you're wobbling,” Joe said. He unfolded the blanket around Marvelous and smoothed it on his shoulders. “You're as good as drunk right now.”

“Guilty.”

“So let's sit down. Get out of the wind.” He didn't pull Marvelous down with him when he settled on the floor of the nest and propped himself up against the wall facing the mast. Sometimes it was best to let Marvelous come to him. 

He did, after a few moments, sliding down with the blanket wrapped tight around him. He leaned on Joe and Joe looped an arm around his shoulders. He was cool and still and his muscles were soft under the blanket and his shirt. The sedative was working, for all Marvelous fought it.

They sat like that for a long while, silent, the lingering warmth from the climate controlled interior of the ship flowing out of Joe's body and into the air and Marvelous' skin. Soon they were both half-cool, though not unpleasantly.

Marvelous' head lilted away from Joe first, and then his body. Joe let himself tip and fall with him, his arm coming to rest pinned under Marvelous' head. The floor was very cool, but Joe hardly noticed. It was even harder to notice when Marvelous turned to face him so that the top of his wild hair brushed Joe's chin and his slowing breaths funneled down the front of Joe's shirt.

This, Joe had to remind himself, was all purely functional. Gai was right, Marvelous needed this. He put his free arm around Marvelous – to comfort him, to warm him, certainly not because he wanted to – and flexed his fingers in the blanket.

“Joe.” Warmth bloomed where the word touched his skin only to be sapped away by the night air. Joe's face didn't cool as quickly.

“What?”

Marvelous' body expanded and collapsed in a big yawn disguised clumsily as a sigh. “Nothing.”

Joe tried to smirk. “Fine, be that way.”

Marvelous didn't reply. As his breaths deepened and slowed, he curled in closer to Joe and became smaller. He was probably cold, but there wasn't a whole lot Joe could do about that without waking him. Soon, sleep tugged Joe under too. He came up and skimmed under the surface plenty in the next couple hours, stirring awake whenever Marvelous moved.

On one such trip to the waking surface, Gai appeared in the arch of light that the crow's nest hatch became when opened after dusk. Joe blinked hazy eyes at him, and Gai just grinned and slung a heavy comforter over them both. Marvelous didn't even flinch.

“Heh, never thought somebody'd come up and make a nest in the crow's nest,” Gai said in a voice so soft it didn't seem like his at all.

Joe narrowed his eyes and practically whispered, “You tell anyone, you're a dead man.”

Gai's grin widened to the point that it threatened to split his face in two. “I only know 'cause Ahim-san and Luka-san were gonna come up and found it occupied. Well! G'night!”

***

Joe woke first the next morning, though judging by the solid sunlight streaming into the crow's nest it was far from his usual early rise. Marvelous was still and quiet beside him, breathing deep and slow in the cocoon he'd made for himself. He'd long ago claimed the majority of the comforter as his combined blanket, mattress, and pillow. This left Joe with no choice but to pretend that he didn't mind, wipe the condensation from his face and neck, and creep over to the hatch. At least he had his arm back.

Marvelous slept on unaware as Joe made his way quietly down the ladder. It was a real pain going slow and deliberate to keep the rungs from ringing and clanging under his boots.

Luka intercepted him at the foot of the stairs into the common room, hand on one hip and eyebrows raised up over a pursed mouth. The others sat around the dining table with their necks craned to observe him. He rolled his eyes.

“Somebody's up late for a change,” Luka said to Joe's back as he slipped by her. “How's Marvelous?”

Keeping his expression impassive, Joe went to the table and snatched up the near-empty bread basket. It would do as an impromptu platter and had the advantage of a handle. “Sleeping.”

“He slept the whole night?” Doc asked, rising from his seat to pitch other items from the table into the basket. Among these were two oversized muffins with craggy tops and several hard boiled eggs it appeared no one else had touched. 

“Yeah, like a little angel.”

“Ah, thank goodness.” Doc slumped back into his chair, hand over his heart. “I was almost afraid a normal dose wouldn't have any effect on him.”

“It worked fine. If he's still groggy, food will fix that.” Joe helped himself to a few items from the fruit bowl.

Gai turned around in his chair to face Joe, arms resting on the back of it. “Having Joe-san around helped.”

If only Joe had come down in time to confiscate half of Gai's breakfast.

“Did you make coffee, Gai?” he asked instead, prompting Doc to spring up and push a stoppered bottle on him.

“Water only. I didn't make a special recovery breakfast so he can spoil it staying up all night again.”

“Don-san thinks of everything.” Gai flashed a smile that blinked away a second later. “Ah, Joe-san. Come down right after you eat, okay?”

Ahim nodded over her teacup. “We must discuss the doctor's findings. It would be best if you were both well rested, but we cannot afford to wait long.”

“Right.” With the basket's handle hooped over his arm, Joe made one last pass through the room to retrieve Marvelous' coat – washed and dried, thankfully – from the arm of his chair. “Don't worry, it's not like he ever takes long eating.”

He'd made enough trips up to the nest with coats or other items for brooding crew mates that the basket didn't add any exceptional challenge. The basket preceded him through the hatch and Marvelous, who had been waiting, snatched it up before settling back down with his back against the mast. Joe didn't even bother demanding his share before joining him. He just sat with Marvelous' coat folded over his lap and waited while Marvelous mowed through half the basket's contents. Food was no substitute for sleep, but Marvelous was always easier to talk to with a full stomach.

“So you saw, huh?”

Joe flinched. In the plan he'd drafted for approaching the situation, Marvelous definitely didn't broach the subject. To make matters more disorienting, Marvelous wouldn't look at him. He kept his gaze dropped to the bread in his hand, chewing with slack lips.

“Gai already explained, so don't bother if you don't want.”

The mast clanged under the backward swing of Marvelous' fist and Joe tried to just be glad he hadn't lashed out by headbutting it. “I was sure he hadn't- Ah, forget it!”

“I don't think I can,” Joe said. He fished the bottle out of the basket and pressed it into Marvelous' empty hand. “What's the problem with Gai knowing? What about me?”

“It's not important.” Marvelous didn't drink. He just turned the bottle over in his hands, swiping the condensation off the glass.

It was important, but Joe wasn't about to make any progress in getting at it without the proper angle of attack. He could tell himself it made no difference what form this thing took, but he couldn't exactly justify allowing the revelation to catch half of them by surprise. Marvelous picked at his breakfast in silence, still not looking up, and Joe spent several moments alternating between deep thought and stealing glances at the captain's face.

Shame wasn't a look that Joe liked on Marvelous. The sudden recognition cooled him.

“It happened to me, too, you know,” Joe said, his tone a practiced imitation of casual composure. He slunk around to sit opposite Marvelous and stare him down. “It happened to me, it happened to Ahim. They didn't change for us, but I don't think the small ones can.”

Marvelous flinched belatedly and gave every impression of trying to hide his face in his food.

Joe drew a breath and released it through parted lips. Marvelous hadn't told him to leave yet, so he was at least close to a victory. Might as well throw in to sweeten the pot and draw Marvelous into playing. “It took me back to the day Sid died.”

Color drained from what little Marvelous let him see of his face, and Marvelous lifted his eyes. They were clear and dry, and Joe realized a little late that he'd been dreading the alternative. He sat there with crumbs on the corner of his mouth, quiet.

“I don't know where it took you, and you don't have to tell me, but you're not alone in getting your skeletons dredged up.”

Marvelous took in a breath that shuddered and got up to scoop his coat off Joe's lap and hang it around his shoulders. Joe joined him. Far below, the green of the unnamed world stretched on without end.

“Sorry,” Marvelous said with a shrug. “If I'd known, you know.”

“You would have given me my space and spent the night trying to walk Doc's medicine off.” Joe clapped a hand on Marvelous' shoulder and gave it an unsubtle squeeze. “Now, if you're done eating our breakfast, we're wanted downstairs. Doc's got some information to trade for yours.”

Marvelous turned a smile on him and slipped out from under his hand. “Our breakfast?”

“Well, it was supposed to be,” Joe said, following him to the hatch. He could eat a big lunch later, he supposed. He'd enjoy this lull in the discomfort sure to come in spite of an empty stomach, if he could.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's chapter two, or: The dream sequence that took Katsura 3 tries and 2 beta readers to write. Is it good after all that? At this point, I don't know. I basically got sick of looking at it and decided if I couldn't make it work like I wanted I could at least call it done.
> 
> Did we all enjoy the hurt/comfort interlude? I did. Heavy stuff returns in the next installment.
> 
> You might have noticed the Don/Gai tag's sudden appearance! You have my falling for Gai to thank for that. He's just such a silver ray of sunshine that I can't resist writing more of him in.
> 
> Comments are appreciated as always, but I'm satisfied just knowing you made it this far. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

It was weird seeing Marvelous barefoot. Gai knew better than to say anything, but it was  _weird_ . He'd seen Marvelous in just about nothing – well, you know, not  _too close_ to nothing – on days Don had to patch him up, but to see him come down the stairs fully dressed excepting his boots was somehow more jarring. Joe trailing behind him in his rumpled clothes from the day before didn't make it less weird.

“Morning, Marvelous-san,” Gai called from his spot at Don's little work table. Don, admirably immersed in his work, didn't even look up from the scattered papers and books and devices. Translating a dead language and sifting the results for clues was a demanding task. Obviously the only thing to do was spring up and make up for this by being twice as enthusiastic. “Sleep well? You're gonna wanna be well rested for- Uh.”

Judging by the cold glower Joe directed at him, he definitely wasn't supposed to say anything too specific. He tried not to make his wilt too obvious when he rejoined Don at the table. Don, to his credit, noticed. He peered at Gai through the mess of his hair without turning his face up and offered him a smile that felt secretive and made Gai want to fidget in his chair.

Marvelous dumped himself into the captain's chair and crossed a bare ankle over one knee. Gai couldn't help but admire how Joe hung close to him, just a step back and off to the side. Joe had every reason to be worried, obviously, but the fact that he showed it in his cool and quiet way made Gai's heart soar sometimes. Pirates or not, they were true comrades, forged in the fires of hardship and well-suited to each other besides.

Gai sighed a little without realizing, and the look Marvelous shot him made him sit bolt upright in his chair.

“Say, Doc,” Marvelous said, perhaps making the merciful choice to not tease Gai for mooning over them. “Joe tells me you had a busy night. Got anything to show for it?”

“My research wasn't as fruitful as I would have liked.” Don rose with a stack of papers in hand and yawned. He was pale and tousled with dark circles under his eyes. It hadn't been a comfortable night for anyone, but Don bore the brunt of it.

Maybe Gai should make coffee. Yeah, that would help. Marvelous _probably_ wouldn't drink it. He seemed to have a personal grudge against anything bitter tat couldn't get him drunk anyways.

“Some fruit's better than no fruit. Can the preamble and get to the point.” Marvelous sat back and crossed his arms. “What are we dealing with?”

“It's hard to say.” Don drew the words out and flipped through his papers. He probably only carried the notes around to have something to do with his hands, the poor guy. “They aren't Zangyack, but I don't know how much it helps to make that distinction at this point.”

“Zangyack by association's still Zangyack,” Luka said, sitting up a little straighter on the couch where she'd been resting quiet and drowsy with Ahim. “Especially sneaky mind reading Zangyack.”

“It isn't mind reading,” Don said, bending at the waist a bit as if apologizing for stating the truth. He'd been saying that for hours.

“Yeah!” Gai said, screwing his face up in a deep frown. “That would mean I have no mind!”

Joe scoffed. “You could have fooled me.”

Gai couldn't even bring himself to get offended, not when Joe's heart wasn't in making fun of him.

“Anyway.” Don covered a squeaky yawn with one hand and shook his head hard. “I wouldn't call what they do mind reading. It's more like a selective scan for relevant information that they initiate through proximity.”

“One night of good sleep isn't enough to make that make sense.” Marvelous leaned forward in his chair and tented his fingers. “What information and what for?”

Don fidgeted and Gai had to repress the urge to spring up and provide moral support somehow. Crabby, sleepy Marvelous wasn't a fun Marvelous. “From what I can gather from cross referencing what texts I have with reports from the others, the monsters in the forest aren't autonomous. They're like satellites of a central intelligence, similar to the unmanned drones some ships use to sweep areas for information. As for what they're looking to find, the texts suggest that whatever power is down there needs – well, they call it a sacrifice, but we're all in one piece so I guess that's another metaphor. But it needs to take something from somebody to have a form at all.”

“And those rotten grabby little creeps are its feelers,” Luka sneered. “Figures we'd cut 'em all down for nothing.”

Joe stiffened perceptibly and Gai's stomach sank. “What do you mean, for nothing?” Joe asked. Gai imagined he felt Joe's gaze rest on him briefly. He spun around and pretended to go over Don's notes, stealing glances at Luka and Ahim the whole time.

“It still got Marvelous, didn't it?” Luka pressed, tipping her chin up.

Gai endeavored not to look at Joe. Oh, the daggers he could feel boring into his back. He hadn't even said what it was! He wasn't that dumb! He wasn't even sure he saw everything right when it happened, it was dark and there was fighting and-

“Yeah.” There was no command in Marvelous' voice, and the strangeness of that called Gai to turn back around. He wasn't glaring at Gai, which would have been reassuring if he was looking at anything at all. Staring into space didn't suit him. “It got in my brain and took Basco's face. So don't be too surprised when you see it.”

Gai shrunk a little as the very core of him cooled. Seeing – or thinking he saw it – was one thing. Hearing it, well...

And knowing what the others had said, what Joe said, what Don concluded. The pieces fell together in a configuration Gai didn't like at all.

It had never crossed Gai's mind that Marvelous could be _afraid_ of Basco. Heck, in spite of everything he found it hard to think of his captain, his Red, as afraid of anything. Marvelous hated Basco, that was much had always been obvious, but-

But by all accounts Ahim didn't curl in on herself and shake like a leaf in the wind when those things grabbed her. Joe had recoiled, Joe had screamed. Marvelous was still shuddering when Gai got him off the ground. If that thing and its drones sifted through your brain for the worst thing it could find, and it pulled out Basco-

Gai felt sick and didn't know why.

“Mighta known we'd be dealing with him again, somehow,” Luka muttered. Gai wanted to leap up and thank her for breaking the silence. “The guy's like a persistent rash.”

“Just don't forget it's not actually him,” Marvelous said. Still looking straight ahead, he lurched out his chair and rounded it to duck down the stairs to the cabins. “I gotta get dressed. Any idea if the Zangyack ship's moved out yet, Doc?”

“No.” Don was mumbling, thoughtful. Maybe he was just as confused as Gai. “It's weird. There's almost no activity, as far as I can tell.”

“Good.” Marvelous shrugged his coat tight around his shoulders and descended until he was out of sight. “Here's hoping they kill time longer than we do and we get the drop on them.”

The legs of Gai's chair clattered when he sprang out of it and bolted for the stairs. He ducked the swipe Joe made for him as he passed and bounded down the stairs in pursuit of the harsh slap of Marvelous' bare feet on the wood. Joe didn't follow.

“Marvelous-san!”

Marvelous was already well ahead of him, stamping down the hall in long strides with his shoulders drawn up high and his eyes straight ahead. He looked like a parody of confidence, and the effect was gutting. Gai charged ahead, cut him off, and bent himself in half.

“Forgive me!”

Marvelous stopped just short of walking into a headbutt in the sternum. “What for?”

That wasn't a bad question. Gai only knew he ought to be sorry for blabbing about the monster, not why sharing the information had caused any hurt.

Then again, if Marvelous was scared of Basco-

“Are you gonna talk, or are you just gonna stand there examining the floor?” Marvelous snapped, busting through Gai's thoughts.

Gai shot up. “I was thinking. Sorry. And I am sorry, y'know?”

Marvelous stepped smoothly around him. “Yeah? Why?” He proceeded down the hall, slower now.

Gai followed. He squared his jaw. Even if Marvelous wouldn't look at him, it helped to put on a brave face. “I couldn't just not tell the others.”

“I guess.” Marvelous came to a stop outside his door – which, incidentally, was only a couple doors down from the door garishly marked as Gai's – and glanced over his shoulder. “So why the groveling?”

Gai could already feel his lower lip starting to pooch out a little. Oh, that was not good. “I just know you're having a hard time, is all. Even if you act like you're not and you try and keep me from finding out.” He shifted in place. His feet felt sweaty in his sneakers, which was gross, but wouldn't betray him like sweaty palms might. “And we're friends, and I know this kinda stuff bugs you, so I figure I could have found some way to tell everybody without-” He paused, noting the way Marvelous' gaze on him hardened. Then, as usual, he decided to barrel on ahead. “Without making you hurt more.”

The edge flashed out of Marvelous' eyes and he scoffed. Gai's nerves were too shot to tell if it was a put-on. “Forget it, Gai. If it's done, it's done.” He opened the door and took the first step in. “You better get ready, too. I don't know what that thing is, really, but I doubt the Zangyack came all this way just to hang around planet-side with it.”

“Yeah.” Gai's hands worked into fists as the door shut in his face. He stood alone in the hall for a moment before slinking to his own door, removing his shoes, and going to settle on the edge of his bed.

It was pretty obvious that by 'get ready,' Marvelous meant 'get out of my hair.' There wasn't a whole lot of getting ready they could do. He fell back and sighed. At least he'd tried, and he'd try again. He owed Marvelous that. He probably owed Joe, too.

It didn't take long for the expected gentle knock to arrive. Three shorts taps, barely heard through the thick door. Gai's tired heart soared for a second, like it did watching Joe orbit their captain, and he sat bolt upright on his bed.

“Heya!”

The sign – bedecked in silver glitter, of course, and hung with little bells – on Gai's door jangled cheerfully as Don slipped into the room. He had a conspiratorial way of entering Gai's room that always struck Gai as strange. Maybe Don hadn't had many friends growing up, maybe he wasn't used to invading the personal spaces of others. He wasn't bad at it, though. He even took his shoes off and padded into the room in his socks.

“He's still pretty mad,” Don said, offering a sheepish smile.

“Joe-san is?”

“Yeah.” Don hovered near the edge of Gai's bed, between it and the dresser Gai kept piled with books and boxes from model kits. “I don't think- I mean, I suppose Marvelous isn't as bothered.”

“I dunno about that.” Gai inched up toward the headboard and waited a second. “Sit!”

“Oh, no, I'm fine standing.” Don's hands swept over his thighs for a second before he crammed them into his pockets. His growing awareness of the nervous gesture just made it all the more obvious. “I just wanted to make sure you're okay after that, and maybe talk for a minute. If that's all right.”

Gai beamed. “It's great and I'm great!”

“Good. Thank you.” Don leaned back a little, resting on the dresser and folding his arms. Was he trying to look cool? “Now, Gai, you have to understand that Marvelous and Joe have ways of operating that aren't entirely compatible with yours. That's changing, and you're not wrong to-” Don sighed, dropped his arms, and drummed his fingers on the dresser.

Gai leaned forward. “Don-san?”

“They're a real pain, sometimes.” Don admitted. He flashed another of those small, secret smiles and shrugged. “Ahim can talk about being jealous of them, but they're the kind of close where they operate on a secret set of rules we have to pick our way around sometimes.”

Gai squirmed. “That's weird.”

“Maybe.” Don shrugged. He dropped his voice. “I don't think either of them really believes you did wrong. Marvelous is hurt and scared, and he doesn't like anyone knowing that. Joe doesn't like that that happened. That's all.”

Gai kicked his feet. “Yeah, I guess that sounds right.”

“You did right by your comrades, even if you hurt a few feelings.” Don ducked down a little, smiling.

Don looked very cute. Gai's heart did a weird squirmy thing that made it feel like it was trying to wriggle free of his ribs. His own face pulled itself up in a wobbly smile and he instinctively leaned back. The signature tone of his Cellular saved him from his mounting anxiety, even if Joe's voice on the other end only brought another.

“Gai, are you still with Marvelous?”

Gai paled and tried to remain hopeful. “Nope. Why?”

“We can't find him anywhere. Navi's not around either.”

“Ah, mou!” Gai stomped once, hard enough to make Don jump, and scrambled for the door.

Joe and Marvelous might both be pains sometimes, but at least Joe had the decency to leave notes.

***

It was strange to be a man. It was strange to call anything strange. Any such judgment, that was strange. It wandered the ship, taking in the newly familiar shapes and colors of things that men made. It took in also the shapes and spilled colors of men it had broken.

“Fools.” Its mind supplied this new judgment and its new lips spoke it. The lips quirked in a strange, sharp way that felt practiced already.

“I hear you in my mind.” Throat and tongue and lips singsonged the words it remembered but could only now define. That was a convenient lie, at least. It didn't speak, even to minds. It only wanted, wanted to be more than a sucking black void, wanted to be something whole and tangible and terrible and free. But men needed their convenient lies. They needed their bargains.

Had it ever kept to such bargains?

It was hard to recall the before with another before plastered over it. It was harder still when that before whirled with wants that reached beyond the simple bargain. They'd brought it something incredible. Something strange.

There was some part of this new thing it was that wasn't a man, though that information had come to it piecemeal, dimly, as if it mattered less than the man part. As if it were less relevant. Were men really so terrible? They broke easily enough.

It moved its man body through the sliding door to the bridge. The console layout was familiar. Good. Very good.

Not so good were the empty spaces. It moved short, pale, soft digits over the controls, testing them, considering. There weren't enough befores. There was no before the bazaar on some nowhere planet. There was no before some wide-eyed brat with a mouth that erupted words at the same insane pace it devoured food. There was no before the battered and patched room he – yes, he, it could be he now – holed up in to lay low since his bounty last jumped up. There was no before 'strange' music played on tinny speakers in an upturned bowl. No before calloused hands clutching the splintered frame of a window to look out at a view that he always tried to sell as beautiful despite it being nothing but rain-pitted rooftops and the distant strip of the space port. No before the promise of the greatest treasure in the universe.

There was nothing before Marvey.

Like the convenient lie, it made sense. It also made him angry, and that made his mouth do ugly sneering things he wished dearly he'd left someone alive to see.

He sighed. No matter. There were ways to get whatever he wanted, even if the wants of men trended toward the abstract. There was another pull, resonant and powerful, somewhere far off. Earth. The backwater dirtball that held the undue distinction of being his grave. He couldn't be sure, of course, if this resonance promised the same rich depth of information as his resonance with poor Marvey had. It was a gamble, and he preferred certainty.

Still, there was no way it could be a complete wash. He'd get something out of it, surely. Self, the befores, power alone failing all that.

And Marvey, certainly, because Marvey would follow. He'd follow alone if he could get away with it. For that reason alone, he would wait a bit before lifting off. Patience was, after all, very important.

Basco smiled. It sat just about right on his face.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on names: Because the characters in this series have so many varied ways of calling one another that don't transliterate super well, I've had to make a few compromises to make the text more readable without sacrificing the effect. I don't like transliterating Mabe-chan as Marv, for example, because it doesn't ring as diminutive or demeaning, just chummy. Neither Mabe nor Hakase read fluidly in alphabetical text, and hakase in particular might read like a name instead of a nickname to English speakers. So, Doc it is. Conversely, I haven't found a good way to bring across Gai's calling people by honorifics without writing him doing just that. It feels important to how he interacts with people, and I trust people reading fanfic for Japanese media don't trip up reading honorifics even if they don't speak Japanese.
> 
> A note on inaccuracies: A rewatch (that I should not have delayed) has made it clear to me that I've been blocking foot traffic throughout the Galleon wrong half the time. In short, I've grossly underestimated the size and sprawl of the thing, particularly the living areas. I'll be using my new knowledge going forward and editing previous scenes to match. This won't require anyone re-read the corrected scenes, but it will make the scenes more coherent.
> 
> A general note: Beeeehhh writing third person limited prose based on a source with an objective camera is haaaarrrddd. Beeeehhhh.


	4. Chapter 4

The dreams left a film on him that lingered for hours. The tacky, intangible grime gummed up his brain and his joints, slowing his thoughts and his movements.

Marvelous was glad to be without it that morning as he tore through the jungle dressed down to his shirt and his trousers. The coat and vest might make it harder to fling himself through the growth, and it was hot besides. The tree cover broke up the sun, at least.

Navi flew ahead. Marvelous couldn't trust his own eyes too far in the dense forest, and though Navi had come with (significant) protest she would do just fine as an eye in the sky.

Marvelous hoped Joe would forgive him. It wouldn't make any functional difference whether he did or not, but the thought invaded Marvelous' mind time and time again the further he ran from the Galleon. Joe would understand, wouldn't he? Even if Marvelous hadn't left a neat little note, any idiot could tell this was something he had to handle on his own. He couldn't ask them to come along. He couldn't expect them to understand if he announced he was going alone. So, no note. Joe would forgive him. He'd forgiven worse, eventually.

He didn't need Navi to see the looming bulk of the Zangyack ship; its camouflage only disguised it from aerial view. To eyes on the ground, it gave only the appearance of a ship overgrown with shaggy false moss and shaded in a flimsy flocked net. The whole mess would burn off in a flash the instant the engines ignited, Marvelous was sure.

He dropped into a creeping crouch when the first glint of the ship showed through the trees ahead. There'd been no sign of those grabby creeps – not even to Navi – but he'd seen firsthand how they could come springing out without notice. He wouldn't be leaping into their grasp this time. No, he would creep and wait and listen with one hand on his Mobirate and the other poised to draw at the first sign of an ambush.

All around him, there was only the small sounds of the forest. Leaves on leaves, water running over stones, the distant lazy rustle and crackle of a dead branch falling through live branches to the ground.

“Well, now.”

The voice flung itself at him from all directions. It was like the dreams: Not immediately terrible and worse for it. Marvelous didn't jump, shocked as he was. He ducked deeper, bowed his head low, got smaller. These were old, old reflexes like the reflex that closed his throat when terror told him to scream. They were only so good for a pirate, but they kept small and soft things alive longer. They were better suited to a small boy sneaking and stealing his way through a galaxy at war.

“You know, Marvey, someone with more sense might have grown out of this by now.”

Marvelous was still, listening. No footsteps, no crackling branches, no gunfire. Just the voice.

“I keep telling you, don't I? Keep acting like AkaRed, and you're gonna wind up dead.” A pause here, brief but pointed, before the voice returned with an audible smile on its unseen lips. “Just like AkaRed, yeah?”

No sound but the voice – no more near than before, which is to say everywhere at once and very close – preceded the warning touch of a saber's edge to Marvelous' throat. He didn't start, just held his breath.

“Stand up, Marvey. Let me get a better look at you.”

He unfolded to his full height and let his Mobirate drop back into his pocket. His gun he kept in hand. Trust wasn't something he had any interest in building with this thing, so it could damn well ask if it wanted him unarmed.

The blade dropped away and Marvelous breathed. Even with the thing behind him, he kept his expression bland and impassive. This was just a thing in a skin, a figment. It was no ghost, it was no walking nightmare.

He could tell himself that, but he'd still come alone.

The thing stepped around him and ceased to be a thing. It felt like another betrayal that he couldn't even have that.

He – not it, not anymore, no matter how Marvelous wanted that – wasn't much unlike Marvelous best remembered. The hat and gaudy shawl were absent. The headband was redder somehow and trailed longer down his back to catch the breeze working through the trees. Excepting these things, he was the same. All green and brown with a splash of red, and that jeering smile.

Marvelous hated the privateer, he hated the monster, and yet it was this vision of Basco that came crawling from the crevices in his brain whenever he tried to sleep. This is what that thing pulled out of him.

“Honestly, Marvey.” He bared his teeth through upturned lips. “There's predictable, and then there's you. What did you hope to accomplish skulking around like this?”

Marvelous blew out a little monosyllabic laugh. “Isn't it obvious?”

“Out to kill me again, eh? How thorough.”

The silence returned, briefly, before Marvelous found the words and cocky tone to reply. “Don't think I've ever killed you before.”

Basco's stand-in laughed and shouldered his sword. It wasn't an unfamiliar gesture. The smooth laughter and too-warm smile weren't unfamiliar either. “Interesting. I don't think you believe that, Marvey, and I'll tell you why: No entourage.”

Marvelous let him talk, held his gaze with eye contact that brought the same sticky-filmy feeling as the dreams. Let the ghost talk, let it bore into him with its eyes, so long as it didn't mind his hands.

“I'm conserving resources,” Marvelous said. He raised the barrel of his gun, quiet and slow, only to snap it up in the next instant. “Don't need anybody else around to blow you away.”

He leaped back to clear the range of the sword and fired. A single swipe of Basco's sword batted the round out of the air.

This thing was as quick as its stolen skin suggested. Damn. That would be a problem. Marvelous fired again, once, twice, using the time it created to make space between himself and the thing with Basco's face so he could get his Ranger Key out.

The next second was a flurry. The flash from the deflected rounds cleared, Marvelous had his Mobirate and key firmly in hand, and in the second half of that second it all went terribly wrong. An unnaturally sharp smile flickered across the thing's stolen face and it dropped low to the ground. It darted for him in a lurching, boneless imitation of the blink-and-die speed at which Basco could move in his true form. Its joints jutted grotesquely as it skittered for him, giving it the appearance of a broken shamble until it coalesced to full height inches from his face.

Too close.

Breathing on him.

Clutching his wrist so hard Marvelous heard the joint pop before he felt the pinch.

Marvelous fought hard to curl his fingers around the key. He fought harder to keep the pain off his face.

“Drop it,” the thing said, gently. “It's really of no use to me right now, is it? I won't take it.”

“Like I'd buy that.” Marvelous let old anger screw his face up.

The thing lifted its eyebrows and the corners of its mouth. “Am I hearing you right, Marvey?” it asked. It squeezed harder, lifted Marvelous' arm up. “What would I want with that little bauble? Could it be you're thinking of someone else?”

In the silence he refused to fill, Marvelous listened for the creak of Navi overhead. Nothing.

“You could shoot me, you know,” the thing said. It smiled. “Go ahead.”

Marvelous' brain sent the signals to his arm. Lift, squeeze. Nothing. A twitching tremor started in the corners of his sneering mouth.

The thing scoffed. “I thought not.” It let Marvelous' hand drop from its grip and took a step back. “Now, let's start over.”

The words knocked a hole in Marvelous just before a sudden frigid gust blasted him onto his back. His head thumped on the ground and the whole world hissed and rustled around him. The nearby 'tink!' of metal on rock and a sudden lightness in his fingers told him the impact knocked the key loose. He scrambled for it, nails catching in the dirt underneath the stringy green underbrush as he raked through it.

The toe of a boot caught him just under his ribs and sent him rolling onto his back again. Marvelous sucked in a breath to fill his voided lungs and pain screamed up the left side of his body.

Basco stood – loomed – over him.

“Much better.” He leveled the sword at Marvelous' throat and Marvelous felt his eyes widen. “Don't look at me like that, Marvey. This is insurance, that's all. I don't want to hurt you.”

Marvelous forced his eyes to narrow. “Still not buying it.”

“Say what you like, won't change a thing.” Basco's smile broadened and sharpened and Marvelous found himself seized with the desire to leap up and snatch his face right off. “You've put me in a difficult position, Marvey.”

The sword moved aside and Basco folded up to take a knee in the spongy pseudo-grass. Marvelous breathed, let the ache in his ribs build in the hopes it would make him move. He'd come here on a mission, hadn't he?

When Marvelous failed to speak up, Basco laughed. Then the amusement left him and his face went slack. “You have to understand, Marvey, you're very important to me for the time being. All this? This is all you. Nothing else.”

“What?”

“Oh, so surprised!” Basco laid his foot over the space between the two halves of Marvelous' ribcage. No pressure, just the warning. He was smiling again. Marvelous wanted to grab his leg and twist it and split the joints. “This... situation, let's call it, is inconvenient. You've left me with an incomplete data set, Marvey.”

“Afraid I don't follow,” Marvelous managed. His eyes swept the ground adjacent his head for the key. Maybe it was the angle, maybe it was panic sharpening his eyes, but he zeroed in on the glint of red immediately. He just needed the opportunity. 

Basco made an indignant little 'hmph!' and used his foot to roll Marvelous to the side, onto his belly. Marvelous sprang up on instinct, gun drawn and level with Basco's eyes. The wind whispered through the trees around them.

A far-off drone accompanied the rustle and remained after the wind died. Marvelous listened.

Basco raised his eyebrows and smirked. “There's another face besides this one, isn't there? Yet you only gave up this one. At this point, Marvey, I'm only what you've made me. There's plenty more, isn't there? Even in you. I can feel it pulling at me, like the part you gave up and the parts you're holding on to are tethered together.” Again, the mirth left his face. “It's a real pain.”

“You get what you get,” Marvelous said. The command to squeeze the trigger stopped dead at his wrist.

Basco scoffed. “I do, eventually. And I will, from you or straight from the source. And you could still shoot me.”

“I could,” Marvelous said. He let the growing drone vibrate through him. He'd know that cyclical engine thrum anywhere. It was his second heart. “But why bother?”

The first round of cannon fire crashed through the tree tops and blasted a ditch into the earth just to the right of them. Basco recoiled and Marvelous used the spray of earth and wood splinters to roll and snatch his key up from where it had fallen.

He leaped for the descending line with the same practiced composure even as another round of fire sounded. The thunder of cannons, in spite of everything, had no place in Marvelous' nightmares. This was his element, and he felt nothing but relief and triumph as the line rewound itself and hauled him up through the smoke and too-hot air.

Joe and Ahim met him inside. Marvelous dodged Joe and took off for the bridge. Navi cut him off and he swatted her aside.

“Marvelous!” Joe was already no more than a few paces behind him.

“Fly ahead, bird, and tell Doc to get us to Earth.”

“Earth?” Ahim's voice was only a few steps behind Joe's “Whatever for?”

Marvelous made himself walk, which at this point felt more like strategically throwing his feet out in front of himself over and over. He was tired, suddenly, and burning too much energy pretending otherwise. “He's- That thing's not gonna go down so simple. It's on its way to that Zangyack ship, and I'd bet anything it's headed for Earth.”

“How do you figure?” Joe walked beside him now, up the corridor.

“I was just talking to it.”

“About that-”

“Later. Once the course is set and we're off we'll have plenty of time to talk about whatever.” Marvelous picked up his pace, heels snapping on the floor. Joe fell behind. He still knew better than to follow him, apparently. Good.

The common room was empty and quiet by the time Marvelous got there. He hadn't even intended to go there, hadn't intended to slump into his chair and shut his eyes. He didn't sleep, though. Sleep, at that moment, was unthinkable. He just let the drift and pull of leaving the atmosphere tug at him.

Marvelous loved sleeping in space. Sometimes, whether he imagined it or not, he felt he could sense the tug of nearby stars and planets as he drifted in and out of sleep. But he didn't sleep. He just zoned out and felt the pull and the eventual snap and release, let it center him.

He didn't notice everyone else filing in until Luka's voice yanked him out of his centered place.

“You coulda said something, you know.” She'd come to lean over the back of his chair and look down at him. 

“Didn't see the point.” Marvelous crossed his legs and sat up straighter. 

Gai, Joe, and Ahim stood loosely gathered before him. Doc was elsewhere, or at least out of his sight.

“Maybe leave a note next time.” There was a certain bitterness underneath Joe's bland tone.

Marvelous huffed out a very short laugh. “Can't trust you to let me take care of things myself, note or not.”

Joe took a drastic step forward that landed hard enough to sound through the room. “You can't tell me this is the same!”

“Can't I?”

Hurt flashed behind Joe's eyes. “You'd be wrong.”

“I might be, but it's not easy as that.” Fatigue did a lot to loosen his lips and send unvoiced thoughts rattling down from his brain. He fixed a hard gaze on Joe. “Suppose Sid didn't save you. Not as tidy anymore, is it?”

The others shifted, but Joe remained rigid.

“I'd be dead.”

“Suppose you survived.” Try as he might, Marvelous couldn't keep the edge out of his voice. “Suppose he sided with the Zangyack and you somehow escaped anyway.. Nothing else changes, not before and not after. Just that.”

The expected silence followed. Not even Gai spoke up,

“It's not easy to think about, is it?” Marvelous laid his arms on the arm rests and squeezed. “Not simple, either. Everything I've told you about that time, that's not simple either.”

Joe stepped closer again, slowly, quietly. “Quit playing with us and say it.”

The combination of fatigue and a strange relief let the words drop out of him. “The fall of the Red Pirates. When you get right down to it, that was all on me.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ╭(°ﾛ°”)╯What a week, what a week, what a week! But I'm back, as demonstrated above! I gotta admit I feel a touch guilty making you guys wait, what, ten days between updates for this? It's so short! Hardly seems fair.
> 
> Hmmm, cliffhanger! The next chapter's coming up fast, and contains a flashback I've been sitting on since I started this thing! It contains more character fluff than fightin' and feudin'. Mixed blessings, I know.
> 
> |∀･)ジ Bye now!


	5. Chapter 5

“That's not true!”

Gai spoke up first, because of course he did. Joe resisted the urge to elbow him in the guts. They didn't need two sore people lashing out in the same room.

“That's so.” Ahim had her hands clasped before her in her usual delicate manner. “You may feel otherwise, but you mustn't blame yourself. There wasn't anything you could have done.”

“Not talking about that,” Marvelous said, sharpness creeping back into his tone. “We're on course, right? We got time for a story.”

Joe drifted off to the side and settled on the sofa. He tried to look nonchalant, which wasn't easy with how intensely he found himself scrutinizing Marvelous' face. “Yep. Plenty of time.”

“Yeah, well.” Marvelous settled back in his chair in a transparent imitation of comfort. “It was a while ago, I guess. Some people would even say I was still a kid.”

***

“Be sure to return before the market closes. I won't leave you behind, but I'd rather not lose travel time waiting on you.”

AkaRed was talking again, which Marvelous usually reserved at least half his attention for. That day, though, there was a lot going on. Marvelous loved space, lived in space, knew space as home, but he got positively itchy when it came time to touch down on a planet for a few hours. Especially on the Galleon. Especially with one other person to talk to for weeks and months on end. Funny how a taste of companionship could make him want more after so many years on his own.

“Ah, don't worry so much.” Marvelous plodded ahead, his shoes smacking and slapping in the shallow puddles that dotted the street. It was a hot, wet day in a city washed dingy gray by what must have been decades of humidity and neglect. “I've never made you late.”

“That may be so, but consider that I always remind you of the time you're expected back.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Marvelous slung his bag of shopping bags over one shoulder and kicked up an arc of rain water. “You hang back and make sure the mechanics don't scalp anything off us.”

“That's the plan.” AkaRed swept a few stray water drops off his shoulder. “And exercise caution. The markets here tend to get crowded, and not always with friendly people.”

Marvelous bristled and cast a sharp look over his shoulder. “You think I don't know better?” He ran ahead, toward the clamor of the marketplace.

He'd never liked being alone; that was just a side effect of his situation he'd come to accept as normal. But he didn't like being treated like a little kid, either. Not when he'd been thieving and treasure hunting his whole life, not when he'd lived as a floater on his own or with whatever crew would pay him since he was ten. Marvelous was no child. At least, he didn't think so at the time.

The marketplace was a patchwork of tents and awnings that stood out in garish fashion against the gray cityscape. It was noisy in every sense of the word, and the constant press and shuffle of people only made the humid air press in closer around Marvelous as he picked his way from stall to stall.

It was hotter and noisier and less fun than Marvelous expected, so he made quick work of filling out the list in his vest pocket. The bag on his shoulder was getting heavy by the time someone – purposely, for once – sidled up to him.

Marvelous took immediate mental inventory of exactly where his valuables sat in relation to the rest of him. Thieving, one gains an appreciation for the subtle weight and pressure of whatever one's carrying.

“Hey.” The stranger was tall and thin, and long-haired in the purposeful and maintained way that Marvelous wasn't. He wore clean, baggy clothes that gave Marvelous the impression he cared about looking like he didn't care. He was already smiling a smile that reached his eyes.

“Hey.” Marvelous took his weighed and purchased fruits from the man in the stall and tucked them into his bag.

“You're with that guy in the big red ship, aren't you?” The stranger lingered behind for a moment, shouting the words over his shoulder as Marvelous slipped back into the crowd. He had everything, he didn't need to chat.

Basco found him pretty fast.

“Hey! Come on, I'm talking to you.” He pulled up alongside Marvelous and extended an offering. Fruit, or so Marvelous could assume going by the stall he'd stopped at. It was bright white, it outsized his fist, and even in the olfactory calamity that was the marketplace it smelled very sweet. He wanted it immediately. Basco grinned like a kid with a secret. “You're the cabin boy, right? Bet you don't have walking around money just for yourself.”

“Nope.” Marvelous snatched the fruit and sunk his teeth into it. Or tried. He tried again and barely scraped the surface of the thing. Scowling, he turned it over in his hand as he walked. It was segmented and very heavy. Had this idiot brought him a pumpkin to eat?

“Ah, I'm sorry!” Basco gave a nervous little laugh and plucked the fruit from his hand. “There's a trick to eating these. I've only ever seen them here, but sometimes I forget not everybody who touches down knows how to get at them.”

Marvelous made a faint sound of interest, mostly feigned. He wanted to snatch the fruit back. “What, you live here?”

“Only for the past couple months,” Basco said, glancing around in an exaggerated way that made his hair sway. “Ah, it's so crowded today. Worse than usual. You done?”

Marvelous hiked his bag higher on his shoulder and narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. Why.”

“I can't hear half of what you're saying, that's why.” Basco took off at a leisurely pace in the direction of the yellow banners that marked the boundaries of the marketplace. “Come on. You deserve a break, right?”

Marvelous followed him out of the market and into the streets, up a hill to the crumbling edge of a retaining wall. They sat with their legs dangling over the edge, and for a while neither of them said anything.

“Ah, right, this thing,” Basco finally said, holding the fruit up. The mention of food brought Marvelous back to full, present awareness. “They're a pain to get into. Don't remember what they're called, though.”

Marvelous didn't care what it was called. It smelled good, and the skin was very white against the deep green of Basco's pant leg when he braced it on his knee and gripped it with both hands. He had long fingers and lots of rings, and Marvelous wasn't entirely sure why he looked so hard at them.

“It kinda helps if you start it with your nails, but mine are pretty short,” Basco said. He held one hand still and rigid while the other gave a hard twist away from his body. “You sort of do like this, and- Ack!”

A sweet-tart floral smell burst through the humid air as the fruit separated into two halves, one still holding the pit and both spilling red onto Basco's clothes and hands.

“Well, that usually doesn't happen!” Basco flicked his hand to get the worst of it off and flecked his face with the juice in the process. He sighed, held out the pitted half to Marvelous, and put his smile back on. “Here you go. The little wedges come apart easy once it's open.”

Marvelous took it and lapped the juice off the edges of the skin. It was good and he wanted to argue that he'd been offered the whole thing, not just half. But Basco did buy it, and he did open it. And Marvelous was smiling without meaning or expecting to smile, so he couldn't bring himself to bother. They both ate, plucking the wedges off and gnawing them clean and flicking the white skins into the street below.

“You're a Red Pirate, aren't you?” Basco asked, suddenly. “I didn't wanna say with the rabble around, but I recognize the ship and the captain.”

“Yep.” Marvelous scrubbed his mouth with his sleeve. Why should he lie? They'd been recognized before, and there was certainly no point in trying to sell AkaRed as anything but himself.

Basco's face lit up. “I knew it! You've got that look about you.”

Marvelous shifted and tried to make his smile careless.

“Is it true, though? You know, what you're looking for?”

“Sure is. What, you don't believe it's real?”

Basco laughed and turned his nose up. “Of course I do!” He got up very abruptly and for a second Marvelous was sure he'd overbalance and topple off the wall. “I'm a pirate myself, believe it or not.”

Marvelous absolutely did not believe it.

“What's a guy like you do on a pirate ship?” Marvelous asked. 

“Cook.” Basco nodded as if to punctuate the statement.

Marvelous couldn't help but laugh. “Seriously?”

“And fight,” Basco added, his expression a parody of self reflection. “But mostly cook. I do both well, too.”

Marvelous smiled wider. “Yeah?”

Basco nodded. “I can show you if you want. When does the captain want you back?”

“When the market closes, whenever that is.”

“You've got three hours. What do you say to lunch on me? You can tell me what the Red Pirates get up to.”

Marvelous followed him again, further up the switchback street that carved itself into the hills abutting the city. All the way to a crumbling wooden apartment building that Basco described as a historically priceless hellhole. It didn't seem so bad to Marvelous, but then wooden buildings were a novelty to him. They traded belated introductions in the creaking stairwell. The place smelled of something Marvelous would later learn to identify as wood rot.

Basco lived on the sixth floor in a cramped room that smelled rich and warm. A bed that would double as a couch for Marvelous, a tiny table, and one chair. It got so hot when Basco fired on his little gas stove to cook that Marvelous had to open up the one window and lean outside. The building commanded a view of the low-lying areas of the city that, at least to Marvelous, was moderately impressive. Basco didn't seem that taken with it, but Marvelous couldn't imagine not getting sick of the sight if he had to look at it every day. Planets were best experienced briefly and sporadically, as a treat.

The food was good, better than Marvelous could remember eating from 'home' since he struck out on his own. Basco made a cursory attempt to share recipes with him, with handwritten notes in a sweeping, elaborate script that Marvelous only dimly recognized, but gave up quickly. He was more interested in hearing about the Red Pirates anyway, and Marvelous was more than willing to talk.

They talked continuously. They talked for hours. In the end, just as the third hour came to a close, it was Basco who followed Marvelous back down the hill.

***

“What Basco said about AkaRed was true. AkaRed didn't trust Basco, right from the start. But he trusted me.”

“You said yourself that you were no more than a child then,” Ahim said, putting words to Joe's thoughts before he could bring them to his mouth. “You cannot hold yourself accountable.”

“Mm.” Marvelous got to his feet and wove around the gathered pirates on his way down the steps out of the living areas of the ship. He didn't turn to speak to them. “I didn't tell you so you could try and change my mind.”

Joe watched as Gai started to follow, stopped, started, and stopped again. The others shifted and settled, Luka with her arms folded and her lips pursed. Joe would bide his time, tamp down his anxiety and anger long enough for Marvelous to get a little distance from them. That was simply how it worked.

Except Gai was looking at him.

“Joe-san.” The vowels dragged out of him, high and warbling. 

“Give him a minute,” Joe said. His gaze shifted from Gai to the steps. “He'll only push us away if we follow so soon.”

Ahim nodded. “It pains me to say, but that is correct.”

“Dealing with that guy takes a whole lotta patience,” Luka said. “He's not easy like Doc.”

“I guess so,” Gai mumbled. He leaned into Joe's field of vision again. “Still, this is super weird. Right?”

“It's definitely unusual,” Joe admitted. He rose and crossed the room at as leisurely a pace as his quickened heartbeat would allow. He'd bolt after Marvelous if he felt he could justify and excuse it. “He's had his head start. You lot get started on lunch while I see about luring him back up here.”

Joe had angry words poised on the very back of his tongue when he started down the increasingly dark path into the ship's mechanical reaches. Several things he held to be true fed and fattened these angry words until they grew so heavy they threatened to slip back down his throat.

Basco was nothing like Sid.

Basco's value to Marvelous – past, present, whichever – could not compare to losing Sid.

That Marvelous had to twist Joe's memory of Sid, had to suggest a reality in which Sid had abandoned him when Joe knew that he never would, illustrated that clearly.

That made him angriest, that Marvelous had tried to turn one of his deepest pains on him like those creeping, grasping things had done.

At the same time, it gave rise to a thought that ultimately quelled his anger. Of all of them, only Marvelous had been made to face that pain in a very literal sense. He'd spoken with it, and whatever passed between them had left him so wounded that he felt the need to reach out for the softest parts of Joe and twist. He needed someone else to hurt as bad as he did. It had worked, for an instant.

Joe wasn't surprised to find Marvelous down in the half-dark engine room. It was loud and remote enough that only Doc might come wandering down and find Marvelous stewing. Still, Joe couldn't have found him without the irregular pounding of his fist against a bulkhead filtering its way through the contained roar of the machinery. He'd ducked between two of the hulking mechanical cabinets at the far end of the room, his face to the bulkhead as he lashed out against the same with one balled up hand. He must not have heard Joe's approach over the mechanical din. He only showed signs of noticing Joe at all when he threw his voice hard over the ambient cacophony.

“Marvelous. Marvelous!”

A flinch. Stillness. These, Joe didn't exactly expect. What followed, however, felt routine enough that he felt emboldened in disregarding it.

“Get out of here.” The words, delivered flatly and at a volume that barely challenged the engine din, only drew Joe in.

“Maybe if you tell me what's going on with you,” Joe said, dropping his voice a fraction as he closed the space between them. Marvelous refused to face him.

“I told you. Leave.”

Joe reached for him – just to turn him, to get his attention off bruising his hand on the wall. Marvelous swatted his hand away and whipped around, surging for him. Joe caught him by his shoulders and got a solid punch in the center of his chest for his efforts.

Joe didn't intend for his hands to slide around Marvelous' back, didn't know what else to do but hold him fast when he snarled and pushed on him and thumped his fists into his back and sides. It was automatic, a bout of resurfaced muscle memory. He didn't know what else to do but remain still when Marvelous' voice started to waver and choke the longer he repeated the command to leave.

How many times had Joe shut himself away in his cabin in his first few weeks aboard the Galleon? How hard, if quietly, had he cried missing the life he'd lost? Even if his life as a soldier was built on lies, even if it was brutal, he'd cried so hard for the sweet times in between. He didn't hurt over the lie, he hurt over the irrecoverable happy moments. The revelation of the lie, against all logic, did nothing to dull the hurt.

How much had Marvelous cried over the loss of his prior life? A lot? Hardly at all? He was crying now, but Joe's personal experience could provide him with no other likely reason.

It would have killed Joe for Marvelous to see him like this, and he'd wager Marvelous felt similarly. Marvelous beat on him and shoved at him a while longer to prove that point, moisture slipping from his tightly shut eyes to collect in the lashes. He couldn't make himself talk anymore, it seemed, and soon even the blows to Joe's back ceased.

Joe waited, a little sore but mainly confused, while Marvelous took in a big breath. He coughed on the exhale, and then it was all over. He tucked his chin against his chest, the tears spilled from his eyes and caught the faint light of the indicator lights that dotted the walls, and he sobbed. It cut through the engine noise, sharp and guttural. It was one of the worst sounds Joe had ever heard.

“I'm not going anywhere.” This close, Marvelous would hear the murmured words even over the noise. He must have, because he let Joe pull him in and hold him.

Joe couldn't help but note, selfishly, how Marvelous' hot, wet face fit in the crook of his neck. It gave him a focus outside the expanding anxiety putting pressure on his heart and lungs. He focused on that, on the alternating hitch and rush of Marvelous' breath, and on where their hands rested on each other, his firmly holding and Marvelous' grasping. Joe leaned into the wall of the cabinet to his right and twisted subtly so he could rest on the wall and drag Marvelous down to sit on the floor with him. Marvelous didn't sit so much as he gave up his rigidity and pooled between Joe's knees.

“You know, none of that was your fault,” Joe said, his tone as level as he could manage. It was all he could think to say besides, 'Don't cry,' which he suspected wouldn't help.

Marvelous shrunk against him and said something that, through his pinched throat, was unintelligible. Joe held him tighter and rubbed wide, slow circles over his back. Marvelous didn't speak again for a while, but he cried harder and louder. If one needed a bawling breakdown, the engine room on the first leg of a journey was the place to have it.

Joe didn't even hear Luka come in, just noticed her skulking and peering several yards back in the artificial twilight. He locked eyes with her, shook his head, and mouthed 'Don't.'

Don't come any closer.

Don't say anything.

Don't make noise on your way out.

Don't tell the others.

She left as silently as she'd appeared and Joe made a mental note to talk to her once he got a chance. Marvelous never noticed, which was for the best. Eventually he stopped mumbling, his breath came at a more even pace, and his grip on Joe's shirt loosened up. Eventually, though not for long, he was so quiet and still that Joe wondered if he'd fallen asleep again.

Then, he rolled to one side to sit beside Joe with his head rolled back against the wall. Joe watched him breathe and collect himself for a moment before remembered his manners and rummaged in his pocket for the handkerchief he kept on him for drying his hands. He could just wash it later.

Marvelous snatched it up and, without a word of thanks (not that Joe expected any), proceeded to scrub his face and clear out his nose.

They sat there without saying a word for a long while, Joe stealing occasional sideways glances to see how Marvelous was pulling together. When he felt he could trust Marvelous' eyes not to show red and puffy in the full light beyond the engine room, Joe got up and offered his hand.

“Come on. It's about lunch time now, right?”

Marvelous looked up and smiled. In the dim light, Joe let himself believe it was genuine. In truth he couldn't tell. “Yeah.”

Marvelous' hand was still a little damp, a little hot, and Joe might have held on a little too long once the captain was on his feet again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ Hoooo, that was longer than expected once I had it transcribed and edited. A nice surprise for you guys, unless you're reading this under duress. Revelations! Sadness! What the heck is going on? 
> 
> I'm not gonna tell you~ Yet! (ﾉ*´ω｀)ﾉ
> 
> Somebody gets their butt kicked next time! Stay tuned and leave a comment if you're having fun! If you're not, go do something that makes you happy! I have no power over you!


	6. Chapter 6

Things were normal again by the time they got done with dinner. Well, they were as normal as the situation allowed. Over the day, Gai got to watch Marvelous gradually emerge from the funk his darker stories tended to leave him in, the one Marvelous probably believed nobody noticed. Gai noticed, and he knew Don noticed because Don scrubbed the meal plan for the day off the galley memo board and made all the things Marvelous liked best instead.

It was a big, loud, cheerful meal and everyone but Joe overate. Marvelous talked the most and ate the most, and he didn't reach for a single helping. Don kept his plate full without prompt, and he got Joe's chicken and Ahim's potatoes without so much as eying them. He even got Gai's carrots. Gai had watched this happen a few times, the whole crew converging on Marvelous to spoil him without comment. Ahim told him once, privately, that somebody had to do it.

While everyone else pounced on the tray of cupcakes, Luka drank and Gai sipped along with her because it was rude to let someone at the table drink alone. Marvelous said it was a brandy and refused it. Gai couldn't blame him. It smelled and tasted more like flowers than like fruit, which might be sort of fun if it didn't simultaneously slap you in the face with its alcoholic bite. Luka put it away without effort, though.

Gai was the first to drift away from the table, for once. On nights like this he liked to hang around and absorb the stories flinging across the table from mouth to mouth. That night he needed air more than stories, which was a surprise to even him. He slipped up the stairs to the deck instead, his departure unnoticed – or at least unacknowledged – by his comrades.

The Galleon didn't exactly make sense as Gai had always understood spaceships to make sense. Don tried exactly once to explain how they could walk out onto the deck and watch the universe scroll by, and Gai had been very patient and attentive during the entire conversation. Of which he understood exactly nothing. Sometimes he got the impression nobody else would listen to him talk ship talk. And it was nicer than just about anything to stand around with Don and watch the universe roll by. That night, there was no Don around to name the stars with him.

But he wasn't alone, either.

He saw Luka first. Gai turned to face her and started to raise a hand in greeting, only to drop it back to his side when he realized she wasn't looking his way. She was looking down the steps, below deck, at someone ascending. There was an uncharacteristic tenseness and delicacy to her movements; he steps were clipped and short and she kept her hands close to her body. Joe appeared from below deck a moment later.

On impulse that he would later rationalize as instinct, Gai hid. He ducked behind the mast and listened – no, waited for them to step away from the stairs so he could slip away.

Joe spoke first.

“If this is about what you saw down there, I'm only gonna ask you once to drop it.”

“Forget it.” Luka's steps carried her away from the stairs, but Gai didn't hear Joe follow. “There's something he's not telling us.”

The ship hummed through the short silence, and then Joe's heavier steps followed Luka.

“How do you figure?”

Gai didn't move to leave, but he did risk a peer around the mast. In the instant Gai let himself see Luka's face, she was looking at Joe like Gai had seen her look at so many cocky opponents: Like he was stupid.

Why did that look chill the back of Gai's neck?

“How many times have you seen him cry? He's not gonna say stuff that makes him cry in front of us.”

Marvelous crying? The cold spot in the core of Gai's spine opened up and spread. He missed half of Joe's reply.

“-like it's anything we don't already know.”

Quick, sharp, light steps. And one heavier one.

“You listen to me, Joe Gibken, and listen good: Whatever that was about, it's nothing he's told us about and it's killing him worse than the loss of his old crew.”

Another lull between words.

“You know what it is, don't you?”

Now, Gai listened very closely, trying to hear over the pump and rush of blood in his ears.

“I got suspicions I'm not gonna share, since I figure if I'm wrong he'll clam up about whatever it actually is and if I'm right it's something that's his thing to tell and not mine.”

Joe huffed and Gai could imagine him folding his arms. “Then what am I up here for?”

“People with shared secrets need to be on the same page. You don't think he meant for anybody to see that, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“And now you saw, and he knows you saw. And I saw, but he doesn't know. And I don't think he should know.”

“Obviously.”

“Yeah. Obviously. As far as he knows, I don't. And nobody else can, at least for now.”

“You think I don't know that?” Silence. Luka waiting for Joe to go on. Joe sighed. “All right. What about 'for now?' We can't just not do something.”

“Just don't push him. If he tries to put some distance between you and him, let him do that for now. I don't know him the right way to know if he would do that, so maybe it's better you found him first. You kinda predict him better than anybody.”

Gai's face tried to smile but his brain wouldn't allow it.

“And that's it? Keep it secret, let him do whatever?”

“It's one of those things that's simple but not easy.”

“Great.” Joe's boots clomped on the steps. “If that's it, I'm gonna go work out. I'm never gonna get to sleep keyed up like I am if I don't.”

“Yeah. That's it. I'm heading up, myself, seeing as the nest's not taken tonight.”

Joe's only reply was a steady series of steps down to the common room. Gai listened for Luka's steps across the deck, pressed close to the mast in hopes she wouldn't peep around and see him. The steps never came.

“You forget how good my eyes are or what?”

Gai couldn't keep from yipping and shrinking in on himself.

“Get out here. You're in on it, too, now.”

Gai shuffled into view with no less than half his guts in his throat. The nerves made his usual smile lumpy. “Yo.”

Luka shifted her weight, folded her arms. For a tiny lady, she cut an intimidating figure. Like, almost all the time, but especially now. “Yo. I know you were up here the whole time, but how much did you hear?”

A very large part of Gai was glad she didn't say anything about purposeful eavesdropping, and a larger part of him felt bad for being worried over that in this situation. “Everything, I guess.” He scratched an absent itch on his neck. “What's going on? You know, I mean, what happened? Since I'm in on the secret now and everything.”

Luka cast a sideways glance at the stairs and sidestepped away from them, toward the railing. Gai followed without comment or question, and they leaned out at the stars together. It wasn't nearly as fun as with Don. It wasn't any fun at all, especially the part where he had to wait and wait for Luka to say something.

“Looks like Marvelous had kind of a... meltdown, after he told that story.”

“Well. It was a sad story.” Gai squirmed and tried to shrug. “I kinda wanted to cry listening to it!” 

“Crying and melting down's different.” Luka leaned back, her fingers curled on the railing to keep her upright. She sighed, more like a rasp, and looked at the stars instead of Gai. “I dunno.”

“But you think you know,” Gai offered (baited?) gently. 

“I got my hunches and they're mine,” Luka said. Her gaze slid over to Gai and lingered there. “Why? Do you?”

Gai shook his head. He didn't have any idea, just a vague but powerful sickly feeling about the whole thing.

***

“Space cops on the horn for you.”

Joe's head snapped up from where he'd hung it under the stream of the shower, roused by the too-clear blare of Luka's voice from the speaker by the door. Since when was he the one drifting off at random?

He toweled off and shook out his hair, hoping he could shake the drowsiness out with the water.

“What about?” he asked the box by the door while he pulled on fresh clothes.

“What the heck do you think it's about? Just get up here!”

Joe groaned. He wouldn't even bother continuing that conversation; that was clearly the end of it. The best he could do, he reasoned, was find Marvelous and send him up. Doing Captain Things usually made him feel better, after all, and Joe couldn't dredge up the patience for cop talk anyway.

He didn't have to look far. Or at all.

Marvelous was there, on his bed, just as he exited the bathroom. Dresses minus his boots, lounging like a tired animal on his belly.

All the warmth in Joe's stomach threatened to drain down, and he hoped Marvelous didn't notice the repressive shudder he performed to keep it anchored in place. He always felt a little guilty, but it struck him especially hard that evening. Sleeping with Marvelous in the crow's nest. Curling around him in the engine room. The memories fed his disgust at himself.

“Call for you,” Joe said, crossing the room. Marvelous' eyes tracked him.

“Yeah, I heard.” Joe's bed creaked under his shifting body. “Gimme a minute to put my face on.”

Joe snorted and slipped out the door. “Take your time, I'll stall.”

He found the crew waiting for him in varying states of nervous agitation. Poor Doc looked worst, which was usual. He had his hands burrowed down into his pockets while he addressed the man video calling in on their main computer screen.

Even though they'd crossed paths only briefly, Joe recognized Gavan in an instant. Kind of a feat, considering the man had at least two doppelgangers back on Earth. The jacket helped, as did the particular way he set his jaw.

“Evening, sheriff.” Joe tipped his chin up, as if Gavan could turn his head and see him coming up the stairs. In reality, the microphone's reach might not even allow him to hear Joe yet. “You start to miss us or something?”

“No, no social calls. Are your crew members speaking the truth when they tell me you have nothing to do with the hijacked Zangyack ship we detected approaching Earth's solar system?”

Straight to the point, no banter. Space cops were a lot less fun to stall with than privateers and smugglers. Joe shooed Doc away from the console so he could address Gavan head-on. Doc went gratefully.

“We didn't hijack it, if that's what you're asking.”

“Yo!”

Joe should have heard Marvelous clomping up the steps earlier, but his ears and his nerves had been so finely tuned to the call that it took the shout to turn his attention to the stairs.

Gavan spoke before Joe even had a chance to step into a united front with Marvelous. “Good evening, captain.” Something in his expression shifted, softened maybe, when Marvelous walked into his view. “Maybe I can get some straight answers from you.”

“Try me.”

Joe shuffled to one side and let Marvelous take the console. Marvelous looked very much himself: Upright, cocky, solid, implicitly challenging. Joe had to tamp down the rising suspicion that the Marvelous in the engine room was just as much 'himself' as this one.

“A Zangyack ship is approaching Earth space. What do you know about it?”

An uneasy shift moved through the room. Four sets of feet and one pair of wings shuffling. Joe remained rooted in place just to Marvelous' side.

“I know there's probably no Zangyack left alive on it.” Marvelous smirked. “Not our doing, by the way.”

“That was my suspicion. Loyalists are normally quick to return communications, keep the heat off now that they're not half the Universe's de facto favorites. This ship's not communicating at all, and we can confirm it's receiving the messages.”

“So blow it away,” Marvelous said with uncharacteristic blandness. He might as well have shrugged.

“You know that's not our policy. Loyalists to the Empire are still people, and someone's alive on that ship viewing our messages.”

Marvelous drew himself up taller, and for a flash Joe felt the need to reach over and support him with one hand. He resisted.

“There's no people on that ship.” Words delivered so icily Joe expected them to condense into white vapor.

Gavan's expression shifted subtly. The softness crept in again, and Joe had to wonder why. This was turning into an entire day of people making a point not to tell him desperately important things. “So you do know something.”

Marvelous leaned forward with his hands braced on the console. “Not a lot. What's your policy?”

“We intercept the ship and board if necessary.”

“I assume you're meeting it halfway.”

“Yes, to prevent it from coming within range to start doing any serious damage. Assuming the hijackers don't divert course, interception should occur in no less than fifteen hours.”

Joe couldn't have been the only one – at least in the room – to hear Marvelous breathe in and out, slowly, loudly, just once.

“We're gonna meet you. Send the coordinates for Doc. I don't give a crap if they're approximate, just make it close enough.”

Gavan raised his eyebrows, but didn't comment of Marvelous' eagerness to cooperate like Joe expected. “Right away. Don't hesitate to message us with any information you're ready to share. He can get us there in fifteen hours, no problem.”

Marvelous scoffed and pushed off from the console. “Yeah, yeah. Good cop me later when you have a partner to play off.” Scoff or not, he was smiling his crazy smile. “I'm going to bed.”

Marvelous smacked the console and the feed cut out just as he turned to saunter back down the stairs. Impatient silence reigned until Ahim banished it.

“I suppose the decision has been made, then.” She caught Luka's nearby hand. “Shall we prepare for bed, considering we have a rendezvous in fifteen hours?”

“Sounds good.” Luka's gaze flicked toward Joe and away again. “C'mon.”

Joe was, much as he hated to admit it, relieved to see Luka head up the stairs to the upper deck. He wasn't sure he could walk down to the sleeping quarters side by side with her, not right then.

He was less relieved when Gai shadowed him until Doc intervened with some frantic shouted plea for assistance in the galley. Gai's absence and the assured silence that meant allowed him to pause at the door to the captain's cabin and listen for the sounds of fidgeting and fussing. If Marvelous was staying up, he was being quiet about it. Beyond the door, there was only silence.

Because, as he discovered moments later, Marvelous wasn't in his cabin at all.

He was in Joe's, bunched up on the side of the bunk that a faced the wall.

Taking up no less than three quarters of Joe's blanket.

Boots tossed on the floor.

Not even a word or a penitent look when Joe walked in.

Like he belonged there.

Joe didn't bother undressing beyond his boots and socks. It wasn't the first time he'd crawled into bed all but fully dressed, and Marvelous had clearly done the same.

He didn't bother speaking, either. He just laid himself down on top of his blanket, slapped the switch by the bed that killed the lights, and pretended to sleep. Or that was the plan.

“Come here.”

Marvelous' voice, quiet though it was, cut through the dark and made Joe's brain spark with a mix of panic and relief. He couldn't get any more 'here,' as far as he knew, but baffling commands were better than awkward silence.

“I am here.”

Marvelous coughed up a single syllable that might have been an arrested laugh. A hand snapped out at him in the darkness and grabbed him by the forearm. In the next moment, Joe expected several things at once. Marvelous tugging him over to wrap Joe around like a second blanket himself wasn't one of them.

“Here. And shut up.”

For all he wanted to do the opposite, Joe couldn't arrange the flurry of thoughts in his head into anything coherent enough to condense into spoken words. He was silent, measured breathing excepted. Marvelous, too, was silent.

And Marvelous was soft. It wasn't something Joe thought about – allowed himself to think about – too often. It was easy not to notice, not to realize, without touching or holding him firmly. It was easy to forget when he was their steadfast captain, mowing though enemies in battle, presiding over the bridge. It was easy, if less so, to ignore in his small moments of vulnerability. In the orange light of the crow's nest at dusk back on Earth, for instance.

But sometimes, a little closer than normal, geared up and aware from heightened anxiety, it was impossible to miss it. And it was difficult to ignore it.

It was difficult not to appreciate it.

Joe resolved not to, or more specifically to make no indication that he did. He would simply lie there, arm slung over Marvelous and chest pressed lightly to his back, forming the fourth wall in Marvelous' shelter from the world for one night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised you violence and I've given you character moments instead. You're disappointed, I can tell. Do I have excuses? No, not good ones. Even more galling, I have a favor to ask: If you feel the urge to leave kudos on this story, if a turn or development strikes you, please consider leaving a comment. Writing and publishing a story in installments can be really stressful when you don't know what you're doing right from chapter to chapter. Knowing what keeps you guys reading this helps me make informed decisions about where to focus my creative energy and (hopefully) make this optimally entertaining for you.
> 
> Updates should be more regular from now on, barring any unexpected catastrophes. Thanks for taking the time to read the notes (and all of this thing, really).


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, oh, oh! So many exciting things in this update! First, it's super long! Excellent, no? Second, we now have a counter for just how many chapters this thing ought to have! Third, I can say this: So sorry this got posted behind schedule!
> 
> "What?" I hear you cry. "There's a schedule? I thought this thing just went up when the heck ever."
> 
> Not anymore! Mondays or Tuesdays, expect an update.
> 
> There's additional business at the end, but I won't keep you up here any longer.

When Marvelous slept with Joe, he didn't dream. No nightmares, no just-waking flashes, nothing. Sleep was a blink of darkness bookended by hazy moments of warmth and comfort. Still half asleep, lying in the dim false-dawn of the cabin lights coming on by degrees, he could appreciate that.

He stirred, expanded his lungs with a big breath and met firm resistance. A smile stretched his mouth so wide it reached his closed eyes. He was lying on Joe, overlapping his side and chest. This, too, he could let himself appreciate for the time being.

He liked Joe.

That didn't help him sleep – at least he didn't think it did, didn't believe it could. It only made him smile wider and settle in, eager to doze and soak up Joe's warmth. To breathe in deep again, smelling him, expanding in the space between his chest and the arm slung over his back.

It wasn't fair to Joe. Marvelous' drowsy brain did register that. At the same time, he knew that he could get away with it. Joe was his constant, his comfort, not just in the difficult weeks since the dreams surfaced but from the very first day. Joe would stay, Joe would return if anything ever pulled him away. Joe would chase him off if this bothered him, but Joe would stay. Joe was assured.

And he liked Joe.

“Morning.”

Marvelous' eyes snapped open. Joe didn't look much more awake than he felt. Slivers of eye glinted behind near-shut lids under the brightening cabin lights. His jaw and the lines in his throat worked.

“Heya,” Marvelous ventured, not moving. He left his smile on his face, ready to laugh whenever Joe decided to tell him to get the Hell off.

Joe swallowed again. His eyes opened wider. “Sleep good?”

“Yeah.” Marvelous tried to straighten his smile out. 

Joe's heart knocked against the outer wall of Marvelous' chest.

Marvelous' responded in kind.

Joe didn't move or speak, not even to shoo Marvelous off him. The thrum of Marvelous' second heart sounded softly all around them, the imagined pull of passing stars tugged at Marvelous' sleepy brain, and he found himself entertaining ideas he saved for better dreams.

“Hey, Joe. Sit still.”

Joe's eyebrows bowed inward, but he didn't move. 

Half of Marvelous was dreaming as he let his weight settle and his face drift down, toward Joe's. The wobble left his smile when Joe, even as their breath mingled between them, didn't move.

Why would he?

After all, wasn't Joe assured?

Don't people like that have to be left before they leave?

Joe's breath curled around Marvelous' cheek and left him very cold. He pulled back, propped up on his hands, and started a hurried and awkward shuffle off Joe and the bed.

Joe's fingers caught his arm, the pads hooking around to rest on his pulse. When Marvelous turned, Joe's face was full of question and consideration.

When Joe tugged on him, he fell forward easily. His pulse kicked hard against Joe's fingertips and his breath felt thick and heavy in his lungs, like water. 

Joe's hand left his wrist, circled around to rest on the small of Marvelous' back. Sound and air backed up behind the sudden pinch in Marvelous' throat. When Joe's mouth met his, warm and plush and already parted, the blockage cleared and the water in Marvelous' lungs steamed off. It bubbled out of him in a sigh that hummed through his vocal cords. Joe's lips moved against his, stretching into a smile. 

Marvelous moved to lie on top of Joe and gripped his shoulders. It was a good kiss. Long and breathless and clumsy from sleep and nerves, but good. The warmth of Joe's body drifted up to meet him, buoyed him. When it had to end – because they both had to breathe a little clearer – Marvelous missed it immediately. His heart was warm licking waves against the insides of his rib cage. 

“Marvelous.” Joe looked practically baffled.

Marvelous' wet lips lifted a little too high on one side when he smiled. “I slept really good.” 

Joe's fingers curled over the base of Marvelous' spine. His chest was still all flowing vapor and warm waves.

A rhythmic thwacking on the cabin door stopped his heart and sent him jolting out of bed. “What?” he snapped, padding over to the door as hard as he could without his boots on. 

“We're almost there!” Gai's grinning head popped through the door and into Marvelous' face. It took a lot of goodwill and willpower not to shove him back out into the hallway. “You two, uh, get sick of the crow's nest?”

The bed creaked behind Marvelous as Joe sat up. “You let us sleep for fifteen hours?”

“Nope, ten!” Gai held up the appropriate number of fingers, which in effect meant that he waggled his hands in front of Marvelous for a second. “Pirate shortcut. Like you wanted, right, Marvelous-san?”

“Yep,” Marvelous said blandly. He planted a hand on Gai's face and delicately eased him out of the room. He met some resistance in the form of flailing, which wasn't unexpected. “Now scram, I gotta change.”

The bed creaked again and Joe's footfalls came up behind him. “What's this shortcut talk?”

“You wanna get this over with, right?” Marvelous slammed the door the instant Gai's hands and face were clear of it.

“Not hours in advance!”

Marvelous scoffed and rolled his eyes. He'd expected this, somewhat, when he sent the request to Doc the night before. “What, you want space cops trying to run the operation?”

“If it means help, I don't think it's the worse choice!”

“Didn't need their help the last time,” Marvelous said, stomping over for his socks and boots. He wouldn't get changed; he could wear the same clothes for days sometimes, usually until Doc fussed at him. He just wanted Gai out of his hair as long as possible.

“Last time?” Joe followed him across the room.

Marvelous tucked his lips past his teeth and bit them. He exhaled and hucked his boots onto the bed so he could sit down and pull them on. He cinched the laces very tight.

“Whatever. All the last times.”

Joe took a few purposeful steps Marvelous' way. “That thing's not-”

“No shit.” Marvelous jumped up with a stomp that satisfied him and strode to the door. “You coming or not?”

Joe's answer was a long sigh and a shuffle for his boots and his jacket. Marvelous left the door open behind him and kept his steps heavy and purposeful so Joe could follow him easy when he finally got around to catching up.

Navi came tearing down the corridor before Marvelous' thoughts could sit too long on the thing, or the thing's face, or that long moment in his bed.

“Marvelous!” She circled his head and he made a playful swipe at her. “You're finally awake!”

“Yep. What, were you bored, bird?”

“No way!” She kept pace with him down the corridor, hover-flapping at the level of his eyes, over his shoulder. “Gai's been bugging me since he woke up.”

“Yeah, same here.” Marvelous started up the steps just as Joe came jogging up behind them. Marvelous cast a half formed smile over his shoulder. “Yo. We're gonna be preparing for our little ambush, so look alive. Right, bird?”

Joe threw a moody scowl back at him. “Your ambush.”

Navi circled around the Marvelous' face. “You didn't tell him?”

“I was gonna and I fell asleep. Lay off.”

The sound Joe made – breathy and short and cold – made it clear he didn't believe that for a second. And he was right.

Doc was waiting in the common room, half slumped over the little round table that so often served as his workspace. He didn't notice their approach, instead staring just beyond the stack of papers he had propped up in front of him. He was wearing his apron, still, and a blanket over his shoulders. It was the snowflake pattern fluffy thing Gai brought aboard when he coerced them into swinging by Earth for Christmas on top of New Years. It was garish and glittery, so of course Gai loved it.

“Morning, Doc.” Marvelous made sure to lay a hand on Doc's shoulder deliberately so he wouldn't spring out of his chair.

Doc slid down with a deflated sound. “Good morning. Gai says you slept well. Breakfast's cold, but I made it.”

“Looks like that's not all you did,” Joe said, stepping around Marvelous to look over the scattered printouts and scribbled notes. “Don't tell me you're trying to decipher all this crap in a day.”

“Well, I don't know what else I can do.” Doc wiped his hands on the flour-dusted front of his apron. Little flour clouds puffed up over the table.

“You can take a nap,” Marvelous said, settling at the dining table before one of two covered plates. “I don't want the tables to turn so hard I'm the only one who gets any sleep around here.”

“If it's okay, I will.”

“It's an order.” Marvelous used his fork to fold a slice of bacon over on itself and crammed the whole thing in his mouth. Sometimes, like now, when Ahim wasn't around to eyeball him for it, he'd hold his fork in his fist like a kid to shovel food into his mouth. He was hungry, the sucking black hole kind of hunger his body usually reserved for blood loss and illness.

He was so hungry he didn't even make the attempt at looking guilty when Joe pushed his own plate his way. He just scooped it up and dug into it. It was ice cold, sure, but he could have eaten two more plates if Doc wasn't too busy snoozing on the sofa to make him more.

Ahim appeared as he was setting his fork and spoon aside, drifting into the room from the galley with a tray of tea. It smelled floral and probably contained absolutely no stimulants. When Ahim took a seat beside Marvelous and opposite Joe, she smelled distinctly of gun oil. And whatever smelly stuff she'd put on that morning, but Marvelous couldn't identify those too well.

“Don't trouble yourself about the preparations to be made,” Ahim said, pouring them each a cup. The stuff smelled stronger out of the pot. Marvelous wasn't sure he wanted it. “The four of us have seen to most of it.”

“Good.” He could trust them to do it right, even if Doc ran himself into the ground doing it.

It was a quiet 'morning,' for a long time. He drank his tea, Joe drank his. Or, really, Joe let his sit half drunk until it was cold and downed the rest out of courtesy to Ahim.

The majority of the preparation and hustle had passed him by while he slept, and he couldn't be bothered to act put out over it. The less time he had to spend considering this, the better. The logical part of his brain insisting that an ambush required at least some advance planning had no say in the matter.

Doc was groaning and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes on the couch behind them when the computer screen at the far end of the room started flashing with an incoming transmission. Marvelous leaped out of his chair and beat Doc to the console.

Gavan's face popped up when he slapped the button to return the call. He was flanked by two space cops Marvelous didn't recognize. Marvelous' face twitched into a sneer.

“The Hell do you want this early?”

“We'd lean on the horn, but it turns out that doesn't work in space,” said the skinnier of the nobody space cops. 

Gavan raised a hand to request silence, and Marvelous really hoped he'd just backhand the guy. “Pirates aren't the only ones who take shortcuts through space.”

Marvelous' lip curled. “Eh?”

“You're a good man, but you're impulsive,” Gavan said. “Did you want us to sail right into your cannon fire at the crucial moment, since you got your head start?”

“It's not like that,” Joe said behind him. Very close behind him. Part of Marvelous wanted to fall backward and be propped up.

“I know.” Gavan tipped his chin up as if to peer around Marvelous and regard Joe. “You're free to board and join our investigation.”

“All of us?” Joe asked before Marvelous got a chance.

“If your captain believes that's necessary.”

Marvelous threw his shoulders back. “Nah. I need most of 'em here to man the ship if it comes to fire between us and them.”

“Marvelous!”

“Marvelous-san!” 

The offense was plain in Joe and Ahim's voices and sharper in Joe's. Marvelous tamped down his guilt. This was part of it. He waved a hand over his shoulder and scoffed.

“You can come along when it proves it won't,” he said. “It's precautionary, y'know?” He glanced over at Joe. “And we've got help. See?”

Joe exhaled in a low hiss. “You're not going alone.”

“Nope. I'm going with the space cops.” Marvelous hovered a finger over the termination button. “I'm coming aboard.”

Gavan nodded, his mouth a straight line. “Roger that, captain.”

The screen winked back to darkness and Joe caught Marvelous by the collar, whirling him around.

Marvelous smirked. “Walk me out?” he asked. He could see Gai peering curiously in from the stairs to the top deck and resolved not to make eye contact with him. “Come on.”

He tried to ask Joe, using only his eyes, to trust him. Joe must have bought it, because he gave a rib-collapsing sigh and released him. 

They walked side by side through the corridors, each looking straight ahead. Marvelous kept his hands in his pockets until they reached the gangway and he snatched at Joe's hand. Joe made an indignant sound when Marvelous pulled him forward and took him in his arms, but he caught on fast.

This time, it was all warm vapors. Heavy, hot summer clouds over the cold spot in Marvelous' stomach. He kissed Joe deeply and was kissed deeply in return, making fists in his jacket and letting his hands roam over his back. They slipped into the back pockets of Joe's jeans, and Marvelous smiled against Joe's lips when Joe jumped.

His whole face was red and tingling for a second when he craned his head back to show off his smile. 

'Don't worry about a thing,' the smile said as he parted from Joe and made to go.

'Forgive me,' his eyes pleaded at the same time.

\---

“Where exactly did you get that?”

Marvelous looked up from the box of donuts he'd found on the bridge of the space cop ship. Gavan was seated at a console, but not using it. Instead, he was watching Marvelous eat. 

Marvelous had come aboard to join a boarding party, not chitchat over donuts and coffee, but as it turned out there wasn't a whole Hell of a lot else to do before their quarry made an appearance.

“Get what?” Marvelous asked around a mouthful of springy dough and crispy sugar. 

“That pendant.” Gavan tipped back in his chair. “It's a lock, isn't it?”

Marvelous glanced down at his chest. And brushed some crumbs off his shirt. “This thing? What the Hell's it matter to you?”

“You had it when you were a boy, didn't you? I didn't notice it then, but when I think back after seeing you as you are now it's always there.”

Marvelous lifted his pendant with his un-crumbed hand and turned it over as if considering it. He scratched his name into the back of it long, long before he met Gavan. “If you're looking to pin me for some ten-years-outta-date theft, you're outta luck.”

“I'm not a petty man. Is it important to you?”

The pendant fell back into place on Marvelous' chest with a soft thump. “Yeah.” He swallowed another half of a donut. “It was my old lady's.”

He hadn't thought about that in a while, but he didn't let his reflection show on his face. Marvelous' most recent, most powerful memories of his mother weren't sweet at all. The fall of the Red Pirates hadn't been the first time fire swept in to gouge out a wedge of his life.

Gavan made a thoughtful sound, his expression unreadable. “You lost her, then. I'm sorry.”

“Wasn't stowing away and stealing to eat for the fun of it.” Not that it wasn't fun, or at least exciting. He just wouldn't have chosen to do it so soon. Even pirate children stick to their mothers – if they can – past ten.

Or had he been nine?

It got so hard to keep track sometimes.

The console trilled and the wall-spanning screen above it flashed to life. Gavan sat back up suddenly, hands on the console and eyes on the screen. Marvelous set his food aside.

“It looks like they decided to arrive early, too,” Gavan said, pushing back from the console to stand. “We'll attempt contact before we begin boarding procedures.”

“Not gonna get you anywhere.”

Gavan's hands worked over the console. He cast a look Marvelous' way, moving only his eyes, and smirked. “It cuts down on paperwork.”

Marvelous snorted. He could appreciate that reasoning.

\---

There was no response to the cops' attempt at communication, of course. Marvelous had expected that.

He hadn't expected an easy boarding, however. The lack of resistance, of retaliation, of acknowledgment, had him on edge when he and Gavan stepped out of the gangway with Gavan's little detachment of space cop cronies in tow. 

It was quiet in the lower reaches of the ship, half dark. Emergency lights only.

That wasn't normal. Marvelous tucked his hands into the pockets of his coat and made fists. No engine noise, even. The ship was just drifting.

“Do you think it's damaged?” asked one of the two flunkies trailing them.

“Doubt it,” Marvelous said. The flunkies scoffed in unison. They probably hadn't had any say in whether or not he came along. Too bad. “It wouldn't blast all the way here and crap out just in time for us to board.”

“Agreed. We should proceed with exceptional caution.” Gavan preceded them all up a clanging flight of steps up to another level of the ship and Marvelous resisted the urge to shove past him. 

Marvelous caught himself straining to hear in the dark corridors, his brain cataloging every resounding footstep and the breath of everyone present. It didn't help his nerves that it was just light enough to see and just dark enough that he could make out imagined shapes between the real ones.

The paranoia was annoying. It was embarrassing. But it paid off.

He heard the wet rasp rolling up the corridor from behind them first, whirled around first, and fired off the first shot. The round sailed through the half dark to strike a lurching inky shape slinking along the floor. The thing made a sick ululating sound and crab-scattered to the side opposite its fresh shoulder wound. It charged them before the space cops could draw on it, its wide mouth hanging open with the lower jaw swaying with every forward bound.

Three rounds fired from the darkness at the other end of the corridor stopped it. It pitched forward in a heap not a meter from Marvelous' feet and went to oily black vapor that rolled down the hall like a fog bank.

It wasn't like the others. It was heavier, less springy, its fibrous body shot through with as much red as black.

Marvelous didn't get a chance to dwell on that.

“Yo!” Gai's voice bounced off the walls as he stepped closer and waved to the space cops. Joe and Ahim were with him.

Marvelous had to try real hard to look angry.

\---

“Quit looking at me like that, it wasn't my idea!” Gai had said this maybe four times since he and the others surprised Marvelous with their obviously necessary backup, and Marvelous was still shooting him sour looks every time Gai crossed into his peripheral vision. He dropped back again, his spear resting on one shoulder as he padded along just behind the others.

“It was everybody's idea,” Joe said. Even though it was totally Joe's idea. Joe got to walk side by side with Marvelous without any death glares. Of course.

“We couldn't in good conscience allow you to go alone,” Ahim added from her spot beside Joe.

Marvelous scoffed. “Yeah, well, your help was ready to ditch me as soon as you showed up, so good call.”

They were in the lower decks again, just the four of them, sweeping the corridors nearest the gangway. Unless something had gone spectacularly – and silently – wrong, Gavan and his little detachment should have made it back to the S.P.D. ship to load up on backup of their own.

“Marvelous-san, don't talk like that,” Gai said, nodding sagely to himself. “It's not ditching if you split up into two groups when backup arrives, it's spreading out your search radius without stressing your manpower.” He held his spear out straight and grinned. “And when they get back we'll have tougher backup than those two newbies, and this'll be super easy.”

On the other hand, with the low lights and the occasional interruptions by those scrambly phantom things, the whole situation reminded Gai a little too strongly of a cheap American horror movie for splitting up to feel particularly smart. 

He wasn't going to say anything about that, though. Marvelous was already on edge, which meant Joe was on edge, which meant at any moment two of the three other people in their party could decide to smush his face and knock him over.

And thoughts of Marvelous on edge brought to mind thoughts of Marvelous crying, which he absolutely didn't want to risk seeing, ever. He could talk all day about Marvelous being soft deep down, but it all stopped being any fun when he started thinking about Marvelous in real pain. Gai didn't like for any of his comrades to be in pain, but this stuck cold pins in the line of his spine whenever he let his mind rest on it too long.

“Besides,” Joe said, cutting mercifully through Gai's mental tailspin. “You're the one who said they could go ahead and leave.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Marvelous said. He rolled his shoulders and the buttons on his coat caught the sparse light. “The old man's out of his mind if he thinks we're gonna kill time down here waiting for him, though. He's not gonna be down here.”

Gai would have said they weren't killing time.

He would have said staying near the gangway, near the one exit they had in the event that this all went to Hell, was a very smart thing to do.

He would have definitely said he didn't like the way Marvelous called that thing 'he.'

But he never got a chance.

“Am I not?”

They all whirled as one, so fast Gai heard Joe swear when he ducked under Gai's spear.

The lights came up so fast Gai's eyes stung. They were fiercely white, bouncing off green and red in vibrant splashes. The phantom with Basco's face bared too-white teeth at them.

Ahim fired off the first shot. She was always faster than Gai gave her credit for. And scarier, too. The round hissed past the monster's fake face, stirring and parting and scattering the long hair that hung over its ears.

The second round, from Ahim again, pinged off the wall when Marvelous came charging forward and shoved her back.

“Marvelous!” Joe banged into Gai's shoulder pushing past him to keep pace with Marvelous.

Gai changed first, faster and neater than he usually would, mid-dash. Then Ahim, and Joe next. Everyone except Marvelous, who they clustered around without question or conscious decision. The whole time, the phantom didn't move. It let them all come to a cautious, suspicious stop far out of its conceivable range.

It puffed out a laugh. “Interesting.” It swept its false eyes over them one by one until they came to rest on Marvelous. “Let's see how familiar this part feels.”

The thing moved fast and it moved all wrong. Or maybe it moved too fast for Gai to parse its movements as 'right.' It moved low to the floor and regathered itself inches from Marvelous without speaking a word. It just smiled.

Marvelous staggered back into Gai.

Joe's saber flashed out and the thing glided backward with another breathy laugh. Joe stood between Marvelous and the phantom. Gai found himself using his free hand to brace Marvelous' shoulder. He heard Ahim cocking her pistol again.

“Gangway. Now.” Marvelous shook Gai's hand off.

Joe's head whipped around. “What?”

“Strategic retreat, get going!” Marvelous grabbed Joe by the flared collar of his suit and pulled hard. “Ahim, Gai, cover fire!”

“Uh, right!” Gai fumbled with his spear for a second, which was a challenge with Marvelous and Joe hustling past him and Ahim's fire already ringing in his ears.

The hail of rounds and blasts they let loose as they scrambled down the corridor only served to slow the phantom, to distract it. If it accomplished that at all. 

It evaded without effort, ducking and weaving, folding and unfolding, all in a barely perceptible way that made its long-legged strides toward them flicker and judder like a video feed on a bad connection.

It was toying with them. That much became clear once it had them herded into the gangway. It blew past Gai and Ahim like a bullet train.

Gai only turned fast enough to see Joe go flying face first, bowed from behind, through the open airlock and into the gig they'd taken over. He sprawled on the floor like an action figure with its elastics cut.

Ahim ran for him. Gai stood his ground.

When he turned again, the thing had Marvelous. It held him tight, tight, tight with his arms pinned against his sides. Marvelous was very still, even considering that. He didn't even twist his wrist to try and jam the barrel of his gun into the thing's guts. The phantom looked straight at Gai, its mouth all twisted up in a toothy smile.

“You aren't afraid of me at all, are you, pipsqueak?”

Gai considered the trigger of his gun. He was a fast shot – not as fast as Don or Ahim, but fast – but this thing was faster. And Marvelous wasn't nearly as fast, Marvelous was still all exposed flesh and red velvet. If he tried and missed...

“Nope.” Gai swallowed and let his finger lift off the trigger.

The phantom gave a short, high laugh. “How strange!”

Gai breathed. Behind him, Joe was grumbling and Ahim was fretting. This was bad. “I don't think so.”

“You don't think so?” The phantom's eyebrows lifted toward the red band across its forehead. It slid one hand off Marvelous' side, up his neck to grip his jaw by the bends and twist his face upward. It didn't twist any further, and Gai's heart nearly burst with relief. “You're a weird one. I could break you apart like little bird bones. I've done it, and you're not scared of me.” It pressed its fingertips into Marvelous' skin and looked down into his face. It wasn't speaking to Gai anymore. “Marvey, though, he's petrified. That's weird, too, isn't it? I was so sweet to him til it was time to trade up, and he's terrified of me.”

In the next moment, all the warmth drained out of Gai through the soles of his boots.

It kissed him.

Basco kissed Marvelous hard on the mouth, and Marvelous jerked and thrashed like a fish on a hook. Gai's ears rung. The heat came roaring back into him.

“You scumbag!” His spear unfolded and locked into shape in the time it took him to close the distance. He brought it down in a hard overhead swing, power singing through it. 

Basco's face whipped around, bloody-mouthed, and he batted Gai away. The blow caught Gai in the chest and the top of the air lock winged the back of his head.

The world swam for a second. Two pairs of hands grabbed for him. 

His vision cleared just in time for him to see Marvelous raise his free arm and put a round in the control panel beside the air lock.

The lock hissed shut, all but drowned out by three voices screaming out a single name.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First: Consider forgiving me.
> 
> Second: Consider leaving a comment if you're having fun. Or if you're having that specific kind of anti-fun fun we have when characters get imperiled. Either way!
> 
> See you next week!


	8. Chapter 8

Joe's gloved fist struck the door hard, the resulting clang sending the scrambled insides of Gai;s head spinning around all over again. The gig had already lurched into motion, pushed off from the warship and out into space.

Gai's head hurt, his stomach was sour, and Joe was breathing like an animal with a broken leg. It was only belatedly that Gai even registered that Joe had screamed out again, wordlessly, when he ran for the door. Ahim supported Gai from behind, her fingers digging into his shoulders. He let his transformation flicker away and stepped out from under her hands to take the two short steps to Joe.

“Joe-san.”

Joe straightened. His trunk expanded in a big breath he hissed out slowly. “Get us back to the ship. I'm gonna call Doc.”

“Are you okay?”

Gokai Blue already had his Mobirate out. If he was giving Gai the stink eye, Gai would never be sure through the visor. “Fine. Doc'll look at you first since you beaned your head.”

“I wasn't asking if you're hurt.” Gai could feel his voice shrinking.

“And I said I'm fine. Either do what I told you, or keep yourself busy while Ahim does it.” Joe lifted the phone to his face and looked away from Gai. He breathed that big, centering breath again and Gai's ribs ached watching him. “Doc. We're heading back minus Marvelous. He's still on the battleship. Yeah. I know. Full details when we get aboard, but call Gavan and his people as soon as I let you go. Tell them to stay on the ship's tail. And not to board again. Look, just do it.”

Gai found Ahim at the little console at the tiny ship's other end. Her hair hung around her face and her lips were drawn into a very tight, thin line. He leaned on the wall and toed the floor with his sneaker.

“What about you, Ahim-san? You okay?”

“I am trying to decide,” she began, “Whether or not it would be prudent to tell Luka-san all that we have seen.”

“Ah.”

\---

“The son of a bitch!”

Maybe it wasn't prudent. If by 'prudent,' Ahim had meant, 'unlikely to make Luka explode in anger,' it was far from prudent. And Luka was scary when she was really, truly angry, so Gai stuck to Don's side at the console.

Gavan's crew weren't picking up. Even after more than five minutes, they'd received no return communication.

Gai wanted to cry. With every second that passed without word from Gavan, without distraction and action, it became harder to tamp down thoughts of Marvelous all alone on the other ship.

Or, rather, not alone in the worst way possible.

“Screw it if they're not gonna bother answering us,” Joe said, suddenly very close behind them. “We'll go after him alone.”

Gai turned. Joe's face was just as scary as Luka's. Maybe worse. “But what if something's wrong? We can't just leave!”

“Do you think I care?” Flecks from Joe's lips landed on Gai's face. Joe pulled back a bit, obviously gathering himself. “If something's wrong, it's their problem and they'll deal with it. We have our problem.”

“But-”

“Gai.” Joe's voice was clear, careful, and cool. He looked like someone trying very hard not to throw up. “I'm not being cruel. I'm prioritizing. We don't know what's going on with Gavan, but we know Marvelous is in danger. You were there. Marvelous takes priority.”

Gai shifted, feeling small. Joe was right; he couldn't even argue by Super Sentai rules. He sighed. “Yeah. Marvelous-san first.”

Joe nodded and let his gaze shift to Don, who'd buried his attentions in the console in front of him and took a moment to look up and await orders. “Can you get a fix on Marvelous' Mobirate from here?”

“Already got it,” Don said, offering a smile that was at once relieved and proud. “The ship's off established routes now, but it's definitely headed for Earth if it's going anywhere important. I've set us up to follow Marvelous' coordinates at a safe distance. That thing must expect us to follow, but this way it would have to make extra effort to turn around and fight us off.”

Sometimes Don was amazing.

Don was amazing a lot of the time.

Joe slumped a little and made a near-inaudible sound of relief that made Gai want to hug him. He wanted that less than he wanted to avoid getting punched in his sore head, though, so he refrained. For a few long seconds after, the common room sank into an exhausted silence. Luka was on the couch now, fuming, with Ahim fitted against her side.

Gai couldn't think of a thing to say, and was privately relieved when Don tapped his hand from behind to get his attention.”We're on a set course for the time being, so I've got some time to start tending people,” Don said. “Ahim told me you hit your head?”

“Ah, it's no big deal,” Gai said. He stuffed his hands in his pockets without realizing it. “I mean, I had my helmet on and everything.”

“I'd still like to take a look.” Don peered around Gai and Joe, frowning. “We don't have to do it up here. I've got supplies downstairs, too.”

Gai's eyes widened a little. So Don was offering an escape. Even Gai could get behind that. He touched the sore spot on the back of his head and grimaced. “Hey, you're right! A helmet's never total protection.”

“Exactly.” Don passed a hand over the console once more and walked off briskly. Gai followed, giving the sofa – and Luka – a wide berth on his way to the stairs.

\---

Don's cabin was a little bigger than Gai's, very clean, and tidy in spite of the various engineering projects he had laid out in various states of completion. He even had a little plant with plump blue-green leaves perched on a shelf mounted under the porthole. Every time Gai wound up in there, his brain tripped down to stories of going into girls' rooms that his high school friends passed around.

Not that Don's room was girly. If anything, the clean lines and neatly arranged tools made it feel a lot more manly than Gai's room in a restrained way. The checkered green and yellow comforter and the cookbooks were only sort of girly.

Really, Gai only thought of those stories because whenever he went to Don's cabin he felt a flash of the same clandestine delight he remembered hearing in his friends' voices.

This time, it was short-lived.

“Ah, what a nightmare.” Don slumped against the shut door and sank halfway to his knees. “I'm sorry for pressuring you, Gai, I just couldn't take the air up there any longer.”

“Me neither,” Gai admitted. He offered Don a hand. “Don't sit on the floor, though. You've got a nice chair and a bed to be sad in.”

Don let Gai haul him up. He had nice, warm hands and Gai felt kind of bad for noticing that with everything else going on. “I'm not sad, I'm worried.”

“Yeah.” Gai settled on the edge of Don's bed. His legs felt too tired to hold him up, suddenly. “I kinda wanna puke just thinking about it. But thinking about it's not gonna help, is it?”

Don shook his head, carefully toed off his shoes, and crawled onto the bed behind Gai. “No, it's not. How's your head?”

“Kinda hurts, but I was back on my feet quick.” He tried to turn around and grin at Don, but the warmth pulsing up his neck to his face had him whipping right back around again. His smile turned crooked. “I took the stairs fine, so no balance problems, and I could probably count your fingers if you tried me.”

“Could you name Super Sentai teams in order?”

“Which order?” Gai countered after a not entirely feigned moment of consideration.

Don laughed, softly. Success! “All right, so you feel you're cognitively sound. But it still hurts?”

“Like nobody's business,” Gai said. It didn't hurt that badly, but Don achieved a certain level of worry-evaporating focus when he had a task to complete or a person to fret over, so Gai would play it up as necessary.

That was the plan, at least, until Don's fingers slipped up the scruff of his neck and under his hair. He hissed and his spine went stiff and straight. He felt Don's fingers twitch and stop over his scalp.

“Sorry! Does that hurt?”

“Uh, a little.” Gai swallowed. Do you blush under your hair, too? Gai could only hope not. “Up more, though.”

“Here?”

Gai hissed and cringed as pain shot straight down his spine and wrapped around his whole head. “Yep. Yes,” he gritted out. Don pressed lightly on the spot, and Gai made an embarrassing whine.

“I'm sorry!” Don's hand slipped away again. “Look, all done. I'm reasonably sure it's just a bump and you don't need more than a cold pack and a little rest. Feel better?”

“In a sense, yeah.”

Another tiny laugh that made Gai feel victorious. “Good enough.” Don slipped off the bed and went to his desk with all its drawers and cubbies, and returned with a little white packet. He flexed it between his hands, and something inside it snapped. “Here, put this behind your head. You can rest here, if you want.”

Gai took the compress and fidgeted with it. It was already cold. “You're sure?”

“Yeah, it's fine.” Don looked off to the side and slipped his hands into his pockets. “I can tell you about some of the stuff I've been working on so you don't feel awkward lying around while I work, even. I mean, only if you want.”

“I do want!” Gai fell back onto the bed with the compress in place and repressed a grimace with a grin when his head struck it. He swept a hand at the desk, indicating vaguely. “Tell me about, uh, that.”

“My lamp?”

“Did you make the lamp?”

“It was here when I came aboard.” Don smiled, awkward and warm as always, and returned to the desk. “I can tell you about the plans I have laid out _under_ the lamp, if you want.”

“Yup, do those.” Gai kicked his feet like a little kid awaiting a story. The subject didn't matter as long as he could rest his head, listen to Don's voice, and keep his mind far from any possible happenings aboard the Zangyack battleship.

\---

“You've left yourself in a fine predicament, Marvey,” Basco said. He threw Marvelous to the floor with a blow that made his ribs ache. He worked his tongue against the bloody gash Marvelous had bitten into his lower lip. “I thought you liked to keep your motley crew close at hand.”

“This isn't about them,” Marvelous said, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his coat. This blood wasn't green; it was the same red he'd always expected when Basco wore his false friendly face into battle with him. It didn't taste red, though. It tasted like dirt. Old earth and wood rot. It felt appropriate.

Basco voiced his short laugh like a question. “Isn't it? You need them, Marvey. You're practically codependent with the blue one. It's a little pitiful.”

Marvelous felt his chest creak when he rose back to his feet. “Shut your mouth.” His voice was ragged with simmering anger.

“Oh?” Basco cocked his head. His mouth was already dry again, if smeared in muddy red. “You're awfully sensitive when it comes to that one, aren't you? I wonder, was it your intention all along to leave him out of this?”

Marvelous made his anger-twisted mouth smirk. “Heh. You think I go into anything with a plan?”

“Why blast them out of here, then?” Basco took a step forward and Marvelous willed himself to stay anchored in place. “My little surprise didn't make you panic, did it?”

Marvelous swallowed and let the not-blood taste in his mouth steady his voice. “Nah.”

It wasn't so bad. Marvelous could tell himself it was like setting a bone: terrible dread, terrible moment of execution, low-grade bearable misery after.

“Did you not want them around once they saw?” Basco pressed. He stepped forward again to come just short of bumping Marvelous with his chest. “You didn't want to risk them seeing anything like that, did you? So you were going to come alone.”

Marvelous' eyes widened and his jaw tightened before he could get his face under control.

He wasn't afraid, not of that. He'd tried, he'd tried to tell Joe but the words just fell out of his skull as a tangle of noise and choking breath. But he wasn't afraid. And they'd already seen. The bone was set, the worst of it was over. He could tell himself that, if it kept him from stepping backward and giving Basco what he wanted.

“What, do you think you're ruined?” Basco chuckled. “Marvey, that's melodramatic even for you.”

“I think you're disgusting,” Marvelous spat, hardly feeling the force behind the words.

Basco laughed, splitting his healed mouth wide in a toothy smile. “Disgusting. Interesting. If it's not that, what is it? Scared Blue Boy will take it the wrong way?”

“Cut the bullshit.” Marvelous was practically sucking his molars for another fortifying taste of rot and dirt, but he'd swallowed it all.

“Oh, Marvey. I don't think you realize that I'm not saying anything that hasn't run through your little head at least once.” Basco's face fell and his voice lost its effervescence. “It's a real pain.”

Marvelous breathed. “Sorry to hear that.”

Slim, long fingers – always soft, never calloused, always that too-soft fake skin a monster wore – bridged the distance between them and skated up Marvelous' right side. This time, he did jerk away, hard to the left. He hissed like a startled cat when Basco's other hand darted out to catch him by the neck, under the bend in his jaw.

His pulse fluttered under Basco's thumb.

Sometime between one second and the next, his gun had clattered to the floor from shaking fingers.

Marvelous was afraid.

“Oh, don't shake so, Marvey, you're making me feel bad.” Basco's thumb moved over his pulse, stroking. “You've got nothing to fear. You see, I can't kill you. Without you, I stop. And you've got more to give me, if I can just get at it. All these missing pieces, they're just... so very frustrating.” His lips twitched into a sharp, false smile. “So until I can complete myself, I need you. Follow me? You're perfectly safe here.”

Marvelous swallowed and cringed when the muscles in his neck strained under Basco's grip. “Safe or not, I want your filthy hands the Hell off me.”

The smile flickered away again, giving way to a gnarled sneer. “As you wish, _captain_.”

Marvelous didn't realize, at first, that he was sailing across the room. His head thundered against the bulkhead and he landed in a pile on the floor.

That was all, until he came around in the brig with a swimming headache. He was alone, which was a relief, and a cursory search of his pockets assured him nothing was missing. Good. Good, or as good as it would get at the moment. He hauled himself to his feet by the edge of the rickety bunk and lurched to the bars. Basco had expected him to wake up, clearly, because he'd left a note in bold handwriting taped to the wall opposite the bars.

'Busy running the ship, cannot entertain you right now. Apologies.

Don't go sneaking around, now.

I may not be able to kill you.

But I can catch you.'

\---

Even lagging behind the battleship, they could reach Earth in under six hours.

Six hours was a lot of hours. It had already been a long time for Joe. It would be a long, long time for Marvelous.

Joe wasn't even sure how he wound up in Marvelous' cabin. It wasn't locked, which wasn't unusual, but Joe had never been in the habit of wandering into anyone's personal space. Still, the trespass felt almost necessary once he'd registered having committed it. He needed to immerse himself in Marvelous.

The captain's cabin, naturally, wasn't always Marvelous'. Of all the cabins, it was the largest. It felt the warmest, the darkest, the oldest. The most lived-in. There were no overhead lights, only small sconces that glowed yellow and orange through milky glass shades when Joe turned a switch by the door. The furniture was dark and heavy, especially the desk with its scattering of keepsakes and baubles that caught the light and threw it back out into the room. The room smelled warm, like leather and spice and old paper. There was plenty of liquor in the tall cabinet built into one of the walls, all lined up in racks.

It was a cozy space, which might surprise anyone who didn't know Marvelous as someone who liked to eat buckets of food, take long baths, and sleep late. To Joe, the place felt perfect.

He let the door shut itself softly behind him, walked over to the desk, and ran a hand over its surface. No dust. Marvelous' cabin tended to stay fairly clean even without Doc's help. It was AkaRed's cabin before, so of course Marvelous treated it with some modicum of respect. Even if the desk served more as a coffee – or whiskey – table and trinket shelf than it did as a writing surface, the bulk of the surface stayed spotless.

Joe liked admiring the things on Marvelous' desk. They had history that reached back to before Joe had ever known him, like the lock he wore on his neck. No small portion of these things were AkaRed's, Joe suspected.

Joe pulled the heavy chair out from under the desk, and his legs buckled. He hadn't sat, hadn't left his constant at-attention mode, ever since that terrible moment behind the air lock.

And now, when he finally allowed himself some rest, something was jabbing him in the ass.

Perfect.

The rush of aggravation almost took the edge off his anxiety. He grumbled and rocked to one side, fishing around for what turned out to be-

“Marvelous' Ranger Key?”

Joe paled, recalling the long, handsy kiss in the Galleon's gangway. And Marvelous' hands slipping into his pockets.

He didn't even flick the lights off when he bolted for the door.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oho~ What in the world is going on? What fresh Hell awaits now that I have time to update this on the regular and I've rapidly realized that if I want the story to proceed as it needs to I'm going to outpace my projected chapter count by a lot? How's Marv gonna get rescued? What's this restoration talk? Stay tuned! Or don't!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's funny. I started out determined to keep my notes at the bottom, but as time's gone by I'm leaving them at the top more. Hi, sorry for taking up your time before you start reading! (｡´∀｀)ﾉ
> 
> This chapter is shorter than average, which might feel weird after two long ones. As I wrote out the long form draft of this, I realized that I couldn't justify squashing together this portion and the following portion without a chapter break in between. If I tried, the blocking and structure would throw me for such a loop that it might make the next release late. Since nobody wants that (I hope), you guys get this short chapter early.

 Gai liked watching Don sleep.

Well, it wasn't like _that._ Except for the times when it was. This time was exactly like that.

He'd woken up out of his uneasy doze to find Don still at his desk, arms folded as an impromptu pillow, snoozing away. Gai crept – or, rather, took a long exaggerated step – toward the desk and let a smile beam from his face. Looking at Don like this, he couldn't help but feel a profound relief that he simultaneously needed and didn't feel entitled to. Marvelous was in danger, Gavan and all those people on his ship could very well be dead, and they had no real plan of attack for when they eventually reached Earth. Looking at Don didn't erase those thoughts, but it did dull his panic. He dropped quietly to one knee, made his own arm pillow, and just. Watched. For a little bit.

But Don was probably cold. The living quarters of the Galleon tended to get cheap-apartment chilly during space trips, which explained and excused the stack of blankets and mound of pillows Marvelous kept on his bed. For his part, Gai brought his hot water bottle from home. He'd talk them into a kotatsu at some point, once he convinced Don it totally wasn't a fire hazard.

It wouldn't do to wake Don up, obviously. He'd lost enough sleep already. Instead, he swiped the blanket off Don's bed, wrapped it around his own shoulders, and stood smiling over Don for a second. He couldn't exactly pretend to be a Sentai member for fun anymore, but he'd always been a good prince when trying to ingratiate himself with the female half of his new classes back in elementary school. He made faster friends with the girls than the boys sometimes, because no boys would play with them.

Not that he was going to pretend to kiss Don out of an enchanted sleep or anything.

That would be dumb.

“Doc!”

The door exploded open behind them and Gai shrieked. Don sprang up and jabbered something that might have been, 'What? What now?'

Joe was out of breath. Maybe not from exertion, but definitely from panic. He was also very visibly angry on top of the panic. “Marvelous left his Ranger Key behind.” Joe's gaze shifted between them. “Is this something else he wasn't gonna tell me? Do you two know anything?”

They both shook their heads, rapidly.

“Maybe he dropped it,” Don said, turning to straighten the parts and pieces he'd jostled out of place on the table when he jolted awake. “Where'd you find it?”

“He gave it to me.”

Gai frowned. “Joe-san, if he gave it to you you can't just yell at us like you didn't know he was doing this.”

Rosy color crept up from the neckline of Joe's shirt, and he glanced away. “He stole it onto me. Doesn't matter. This is news to you?”

“As far as I know,” Don said. “Right, Gai?”

“He never said anything to me.” Gai pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. “We could call and ask?”

Joe shook his head. “Too big a risk right now. If he still has his Mobirate on him, I don't want it taken. If it's taken, I'm not talking to anybody else but Marvelous.”

Gai's shoulders fell. “Oh. Yeah. That's right.”

“We're gonna tell the others and see about getting a hold of Gavan again,” Joe said, his voice so cool in contrast to his red face and darting eyes that it stung Gai to look at him. “They need to know, so.”

So they can protect him, whoever gets there first.

Gai could finish Joe's sentence, but he didn't dare. The implication hung over them all and made the air heavy. Joe sighed and stepped backward into the doorway as if to escape the pressing atmosphere.

“You two finish up...” Joe eyed them, Gai especially. “Whatever it is you're doing, and come up top. We've got a lot to do in the next few hours.”

“Right,” Gai said to the closing door.

“Gai,” Don said, after a moment passed in silence. “You're not cold, are you?”

\---

Hours passed. In the absence of distractions, Marvelous wasn't too bad at gauging the passage of time. There wasn't a whole lot to do in the brig besides sit and wait and get hungry. He wouldn't touch a scrap of food on this ship. He'd made that decision in advance.

Every hour or so, one or two of those red-threaded shamblers would lurch by and check in on him. Marvelous scowled at some and grinned cockily at others, and though he varied his expressions he felt only a detached disdain for them. As long as he sat tight, crosslegged on his bunk, facing the door and behaving himself, they had no reason to do more than peer in.

They went down about as easy as Sgormin anyways, now that they couldn't reach into his brain and switch him off. No, they wouldn't be the problem when the time came.

The problem, such as he was, didn't bother coming down to see him. That didn't stop Marvelous from flinching at the first sound of footfalls at the far end of the corridor before putting on his welcome face for the monster guards.

It was easy, somehow, not to think. Maybe it was his trust in his crew to come for him, maybe it was sheer emotional exhaustion, but in the six long hours to Earth Marvelous was uncharacteristically patient and sedate.

Until, suddenly, the ship roared and rocked all around him and sent him tumbling to the floor. His shoulder hit before his head, luckily. He popped right back up and braced himself against one of the poles supporting the bunk. He watched for the flash of alarm lights, listened for the blare of the siren, but neither came.

Whatever had happened, it seemed, was intentional.

A crowd of the creeps went scramble-lurching by in a real hurry. Marvelous raised his eyebrows and followed their progress with a turn of his head. Time to mobilize, apparently. They must have arrived.

Marvelous was still and stone-faced when a different set of steps, light and purposeful and coordinated, started down the corridor. The setting helped. He was the prisoner of an enemy in the brig of a cookie cutter Zangyack ship. This was closer to the dust in the quarry and blood in his boot. This was fine.

Basco had even abandoned the headband. He stood, comfortably unfamiliar, with his arms crossed on the other side of the bars. It wasn't a big change, barely enough, but it would do. Marvelous had appreciated the flashy privateer in a way. He could handle that half-familiar enemy he could baldly despise. The monster with the friendly face, that he'd always have some trouble with.

“Well, don't we look lively?” Basco lifted a keyring off the sash around his hips and unlocked the cell door. It rattled open to admit him. “Feel up to cooperating, Marvey?”

Marvelous matched his cocky posture. The ship was steady again, he could afford it. “You giving me the choice?”

“I've always given you a choice.”

Silence from Marvelous aside from a low growl.

Basco smiled, and it was so sharp and nasty that Marvelous accepted it easily. So easily that he didn't feel the need to step away when Basco approached him and said, “Come along, now, we can't keep everyone waiting.”

“What, you got guests over?”

“You could say that. I'm sure someone's come to rubberneck by now.” Basco took hold of Marvelous' wrists and slapped a pair of cuffs on him before he could jerk away. “Oh, don't look so surprised. You can't trust me, I can't trust you. It's all very egalitarian. Now, come.”

Basco grabbed the cuffs by the stout piece that joined them and tugged. Marvelous gave and skulked along after a moment's resistance. Two of the monsters met them in the corridor and came loping up to Basco. They had a stooped posture when they moved slow that felt appropriate despite clashing with their lengthy arms. They took Basco's wordless nod as a command to flank Marvelous, and one of them handed off a polished metal cable, one end of which Basco clamped to the center of the cuffs so he could lead Marvelous around by it. The length of the cable flickered briefly then hummed to life as a glowing blue tether between Marvelous and Basco's hand. The cuffs crackled against Marvelous' pulse points. It didn't hurt, only threatened. He scoffed and flexed his hands.

Basco wasn't impressed by his bravado. He gave a hard yank on the tether and brought Marvelous staggering along behind him.

A long walk and drag later, Marvelous found himself outside the ship atop some tall building or other at the heart of a familiar city on Earth. A city with a deep gorge blasted into it. Black smoke rose to mingle with the general grayness of a cloudy mid-winter day. Fires added splashes of color.

Marvelous let his fortifying fury show on his face and in the way he carried himself.

“What the Hell's this supposed to accomplish?” Marvelous asked, his voice a low and sneering grumble as he looked to the man holding his lead.

“You're going to fault me for making an entrance?” Basco chortled and the heat under Marvelous' coat flared again. The anger felt good and right. It felt safe despite the calamity below. “Marvey, Marvey. Maybe you have changed. Doubt it, though.” He tossed his head to shake the hair away from his face and produced a palm-sized device from his pocket. When he spoke into it, his voice boomed from the ship behind them and rolled out over the city. “Greetings, assorted gawkers! I've come with a proposition, and since I imagine you must all be in such a hurry I'll make it brief: Your little dirt clump has something I need, and I'm here to take it. Anything but complete compliance, and your lives are forfeit. Sound fair?”

A clamorous murmur from below, too distant to register as anything but general distress. Marvelous' chin dropped to his chest and he set his jaw.

Then, from behind, the first thud of cannon fire.

Marvelous' heart soared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so begins the rescue! We'll see in a couple days if it pans out.
> 
> A little social business: This happens to be a milestone chapter, bringing this story over 30,000 words. This makes it:   
> 1) Technically a novella now.  
> 2) The absolute longest piece of fan writing I have ever done. My original work isn't usually this long, even, and people pay me to do that. Sometimes.
> 
> I didn't foresee it getting this long. To be honest, I didn't foresee coming back to it at all after I posted the first chapter. It didn't feel like a commitment I could afford. When I started this, I was in a profound state of burnout. I'd gotten massively screwed in a professional arrangement (which I am in the slow process of terminating), I was experiencing an emotional rift with a creative partner (which has since been repaired), and I was basically dragging myself through the penultimate fifth of my book. 
> 
> I was so, so tired when I started this, and maintaining it has energized me. It's given me something to do that wasn't life-or-death creatively. It's reintroduced me to taking risks and embracing imperfection. It's got me excited to write something explicitly, exclusively because I want to write it because there's no tangible reward at stake. You guys don't know the whole of my professional life, but I will tell you this: I sold myself out for so long and for so little toward the end that even when I was working on personal 'get me out of this deal' projects like my book, I was creating in a constant state of anxiety and exhaustion.
> 
> And that's not true anymore.
> 
> This might be the longest I've ever 'talked' to you, but it's necessary because you have kept me coming back to this. I would return to it again and again on my own time otherwise, but posting it in public and seeing people engage with it keeps me, well, awake. I'm not just daydreaming it, I'm honing and planning and tempering it. I care about it in a way I wouldn't if it wasn't for you guys.
> 
> So.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Kacchi out, see you Monday.
> 
> Or Tuesday.
> 
> Or Sunday, if I go mad with inspiration and free time.


	10. Chapter 10

The Zangyack ship pitched hard to one side, a hole crushed in on one side by the first volley. The thrusters flashed bright, once, as the spare crew of thoughtless things scrambled to compensate and right her. Their efforts swiftly failed, and she went careening away from the skyscraper that Basco had chosen as his impromptu stage and into an adjacent one. They'd made a gamble assuming her shields could be down, but it paid off. Now they wouldn't have the ship to worry about once they got their feet down.

Gokai Blue, waiting in the gangway for the lifelines to drop, breathed in deep. Gai was beside him, suited up, practically vibrating. It wasn't excitement, exactly, that had him so close to bouncing on his toes, but there was a giddy viciousness to his enthusiasm that Joe rarely saw. Joe, as ever, burned much cooler. Or dimmer, maybe, coals under the ash pile.

Two bright forms moved against the gray of the rooftop, berry red towed behind moss green.

Joe breathed out.

The descent began. They came down fast, the dry winter air shrieking around them as they whizzed down the lifelines into the cacophony below. The intermittent cannon fire, the roar of engines, the wind, it all swirled around them. Another sound, rising from below, somehow cut through it all. Cheers.

“Gokaigers!”

Gai didn't bounce and pose like Joe would have expected under other circumstances. He had his spear ready, just like Joe had his saber. As they stared down their captain and his captor, anger rolled and boiled in the space between them. Joe fought hard not to look solely at Marvelous, to assess him, but he could feel Marvelous' eyes trained on him.

“Well, well, well,” said the thing with Basco's face, its chipper tone carrying well over the din. He swept the arm holding Marvelous' lead – a lead, like he was a damned animal – and hauled him closer. Marvelous snarled. “Blue Boy is here, and he brought the new cabin boy.”

“Who's got the element of surprise this time?” Gai sneered. It was a weird intonation, coming from Gai.

“Hmm? Well, now.” Basco's face pulled up into a wider smile that he directed at Marvelous. “It looks like you're not the only one ready to treat me like the genuine article, doesn't it, Marvey?”

“Don't you even speak to him,” Joe found himself saying, tendons creaking with the force he put into gripping his sword.

“Oh? Blue Boy, I don't think you'd care for our alternative methods of communication.” Basco raised his eyebrows so high they threatened to disappear under his hairline. “You didn't seem best pleased the last time.”

“You touch him, and I'll tear you apart,” Joe said. There would be no blowing away here, that was too quick and efficient.

“I don't have to touch him to make you squirm, Blue Boy.” Basco's hand moved subtly on the grip of the lead, and the tether to Marvelous' hands burned a brighter blue.

Marvelous _shrieked_.

Energy crackled around him, blue-white and jagged, enveloping him as he dropped to his knees. Gai started for them, but he only got two steps into his mad dash before Joe caught him by the collar and dragged him back.

Clearly pleased by this, Basco switched the flow of power back off and let Marvelous slump and catch his breath. When he had it, he snapped his face up to glower at Gai and Joe.

“He ain't gonna kill me. He needs me. Come on!”

Basco smirked, but he didn't light Marvelous up again. “Don't have to kill you, either.”

Joe's guts knotted themselves up and his mouth dried. “Basco.”

“Oh, give it a rest.” Basco knelt by Marvelous and put a hand in his hair, grasping hard. “Are you feeling protective, Blue Boy, or are you jealous? Tell me, Marvey, is it possible you've got a bit of a thing for men with long hair? Be honest.”

The gob of spit Marvelous fired into Basco's smirking face, while honest, wasn't the answer he was looking for. He lit Marvelous up again, and this time Joe couldn't hold Gai back. This time, he hardly wanted to.

Even in a fury, much to Joe's surprise, Gai could stick to their plan: Get between Basco and Marvelous, give Joe time to drive Basco further away. Gai and his spear made a good wedge, even if it tore a hole in Joe's heart to hear Marvelous scream out behind him when Gai's spear came down on the cable. The electrified lead, it seemed, still had one last charge to give off before it sparked out and died, severed. He heard Gai dispatch the two guards and shout for Marvelous to take cover behind him, but it only did so much to cut the pain of that cry.

Joe buried his hurt with all the other embers in his ash pile, kept it screaming hot but hidden as he forced Basco backward with a wide swing of his saber. Basco hopped back and flung one dead end of the cable aside, the smirk on his face as light as his steps. The next swing almost caught him in the right shoulder, instead swiping through the loose fabric of his tunic the reveal a clean arc of pale skin underneath. Basco's smirk disappeared, replaced with a sneer under narrowed, vicious eyes.

Strange that the monster only moved so fast now. Maybe he'd expended his reserves of power toying with them the last time, showing off, making sport of them.

Making sport of Marvelous.

Rage pulled and steered him, barely tamped down by the rationality they needed to get Marvelous free. It pulled his arm down hard, made his footwork snappy and fierce, and by the time Gokai Green came flying down by another lifeline he wasn't sure if he was trying to get Marvelous free or pen Basco in to carve him up.

The trade off at the building's edge, though improvised, went well. The lifeline unfurled right past the building's edge, all the way to the ground, and Gai handed (or chucked) Marvelous off to a rapidly descending Doc in the couple seconds Joe spared himself to look back.

It was two seconds Basco used to charge him, heedless of his swinging sword, and try to put the toe of his boot in his gut. Joe reeled backward, turning head over heels to land light on his feet with his sword at the ready. Basco laughed just as three more of the red phantoms wove out of oily threads that sprung from the rooftop to Joe's sides and aft.

Joe leaped light and eager away from them, effectively herded back from their master. It didn't matter. He was already smiling, the turn unseen behind his helmet.

Gokai Red came swinging into view, sailing high over the farther edge of the roof with two sabers in hand. Silver followed in his wake. Basco didn't notice until they were on him. Joe's smile threatened to turn to sound in his mouth. The bastard was slowed from his foolhardy exertions earlier, they had Marvelous, and now it was three against one with the cannons as backup.

This would be easy.

It should have been easy.

While Joe was busying himself slashing away the phantoms, Gokai Silver went flying past him to crash into a big rooftop air conditioning unit. His body stove the whole thing in, but he was up again before Joe could so much as cry out to him. Instead, it was Gai screaming out as he dashed straight past Joe again.

“Watch out!”

Too late.

Joe followed Gai, first with his eyes and then with his body. They didn't reach Red in time. Basco caught him and held him much the same way he'd snagged Gai more than a year before. Basco wasn't as fast as he'd like to be, but he was fast enough. Fast enough the Joe and Gai came to the unspoken agreement to halt, to wait, to watch. To avoid aggravating what had become a nightmare situation.

“You lot are real cocky to try something like this,” Basco said, casting a false fond glance down at the squirming man in his grasp. “Real cocky. Pretty stupid, too!”

“Let him go!” Joe didn't have to hold Gai back, but he could feel the force behind those words trying to propel him forward.

Basco chortled. “Patience.” He kicked Red's legs out from under him and shoved him onto his knees. “Now, you brought me two swords, but I don't think your impersonating a superior officer entitles me to execute you.”

The fierce tension left Joe and Gai, and Basco must have noticed the air dropping out their sails. He cackled.

“Oh, you're surprised I can't tell Marvey from a bootleg?” He brought a knee up hard into Gokai Red's side where his ribs ended, and in a single red flash the charade ended. Doc screamed so loud Joe could hear him hurting his throat. Basco, smirking, waited for the sound to die before he spoke again. “What was the plan? Distract me with this little twerp while you get him away?”

That had been the plan. Joe's joints ached with the cold pumping through him.

Gai wasn't cold, that much was clear from the way he hissed, again, “Let him go.”

Basco gave a short, chirpy, incredulous laugh. “Or what? Are you scared, now? Doesn't seem that way.” He looked down at Doc, who'd bowed over to struggle for breath. Then, smoothly, Basco hauled him up by the back of his jacket. He sighed and pursed his lips. “Ah, fine.”

Just as Joe took the first step in his rush, Basco whipped around with Doc trailing behind his hand like a flag.

Doc went through the air in a tumbling, lopsided spin, half his jacket pulled off him by the force with which Basco hurled him. He cleared the edge of the roof and began the descent to the street below in an instant.

“Doc!”

“Don!”

Gai raised his spear and diverted course to where Doc had fallen. Basco swept in quick to stand in his path, and what happened next stopped Joe mid-charge.

The tines of Gai's spear caught Basco just under his shoulder, snagged in his clothes, and tore a strip of hot red straight across his chest. The cry Basco let out as he spun to one side, out of Gai's way, was food for the embers Joe carried around in his heart.

So he could feel pain.

Good.

Gai disappeared over the edge while Joe made a mad rush for Basco, who'd pulled himself back up to stand in the spatters and smears from his chest. Up close, bearing down on him with wild swings Basco raised an arm to deflect, Joe could smell it.

It smelled like that sinkhole. Old dirt, wet stone, rotting trees. Age and stagnation.

Basco threw him backward with a hard sweep of his arm. Though Joe had cleaved down hard on it, it was undamaged. Joe readied himself.

“Well.” Basco drew a breath that gurgled through a marred chest. He managed to smirk with his bloody mouth. “Unforeseen developments. Interesting. All the more reason to hurry.”

Basco stepped back toward the edge of the roof, took a hard jump up as soon as Joe came after him again, and was gone. Just, gone. By the time Joe reached the edge, Basco had effectively disappeared.

Fine.

He ran to the opposite edge, where Doc had fallen and Gai followed, and practically collapsed with relief when he saw half his crew, half his family, safe.

Gai was crouched by Doc, who offered a wobbly wave when they all noticed Joe looking over. Marvelous, the cuffs separated but still on his wrists, waved harder. Joe couldn't tell if he looked tired, or scared, or hurt. It didn't matter in that moment. He was safe, they all were.

And all around them, a growing crowd of Earthlings gathered. A few came and knelt by Doc with Gai, more than a few kids swarmed Marvelous.

Joe smiled to himself. The ordeal was far from over, but they were all alive.

And, some small part of him supplied, on what counted for home ground.

\---

Doc was hurt bad. Not the kind of bad that could kill him, Marvelous could tell that just looking at him, but hurt bad enough to keep him out of the fight for a while. He couldn't know yet what happened up top before Doc came soaring off the edge, but Doc was being awful tender with how he breathed and how he leaned on Gai. Gai talked low to him, on and off, for a while after they landed. Like they were the only two people on the ground and the crowd had disappeared.

It was a real sight, Gai vaulting over the building's edge in pursuit of Doc. Marvelous' heart fell into his boots when he saw Doc go over the side, flinging around like a doll, but then came Gai. All the smoke in the air – from the crater, from the downed ship – made it hard to make out the mad dive in exact detail. Gai appeared as a silver flash at the edge of the roof, then launched down like a shooting star. He met Doc halfway to the ground. Sparks flew from a long streak carved into the building when Gai buried his spear in it to anchor their descent. When they finally got their feet on the ground, they were both shaking and poor Doc looked ready to faint.

“Hey. You're okay, right?” Marvelous looked down into no fewer than four sets of eyes. He must have stared into space too long. The brats were getting restless.

“Bah, I'm fine.” He grinned and plopped a hand on the head of the girl who'd spoken up. “You lot oughtta get outta here.”

She reached up to touch the smoke-smelling cuff on his wrist. “What are these? Does it hurt?”

Marvelous reeled his hand in. “Nah. Just some crap to saw off after we leave. Shove off, already.”

“Marvelous-san!” How Gai managed to look so indignant even in his helmet Marvelous had no idea.

Marvelous shrugged. “What, you don't want them to go home where it's safe?”

“We can't,” said the girl who'd spoken first.

“Not til they put out the fires and clear the roads,” said an older – or at least much bigger – girl. She put her hands behind her head and sighed, looking up into the darkening sky. “It's like the war again. This stuff used to happen all the time.”

“Yeah,” Doc said, very softly, not looking their way. Maybe he couldn't know exactly what the kid had seen, but he'd lost a home to the same forces that tried to claim Earth. He knew well enough.

The littlest ones in the throng, maybe they didn't. No, they couldn't. They shouldn't, either.

“Yeah, well, that's the last time it's gonna happen.” He gripped one wrist and flexed it, testing it. Didn't hurt, ought to be fine. “Doc. You steady enough to move out?”

Doc did his own test on his ribs with a big breath that made him cringe. “I'm good. Let's go.”

The kids clustered around Doc and Gai now, the girls among them coming particularly close to Doc. “Shouldn't you go to a hospital?” one of them asked.

Doc shook his head and climbed up Gai to stand. “We have good medicine on our ship. Besides, the hospitals down here are going to need all the space they can get. Don't worry about us.”

“Enough chitchat,” Marvelous said, already scanning the sky for the descent of their lines. “We got regrouping to do.”

\---

He fully expected Joe to punch him in the face once they had Doc's cracked rib treated.

He didn't expect, or even suspect, that Joe would catch him up in his arms and cling to him when he was still reeling from the blow.

He didn't expect Joe to be so solid despite the shudder in his breath, or for everyone in the room to go quiet instead of erupting in a raucous chorus of hoots and cackles. The loudest reaction was a sharp gasp from Gai, seated on the floor by the sofa and doting on Doc, who'd said something about not wanting to roll off the couch once the pain killers put him to sleep.

“What were you thinking?” The words fell down the collar of Marvelous' shirt as heavy, hot air and stirred a sickness in the middle of him. It took him a long moment to answer.

“What's that mean?” Marvelous asked. His mind picked around within itself for the least embarrassing way to break away. He kept rejecting ideas and couldn't say why. “Brought you straight to the bastard, didn't I?”

“You could have-” Joe breathed in with a sound so sharp it cut Marvelous. He wanted Joe to hit him again. That was easier. Instead, Joe held him tighter. That wasn't easy. “God damn you, why not tell us?”

“How could I?” The words escaped him in an unplanned hiss as he pressed hands to Joe's chest to shove him away. He wished he could punch them back into his own mouth, but they were out. It was all out, or most of it was, whether he wanted it or not. All he could do was cover the words over with new. “What, were you gonna let me play the bait?”

A strange hurt passed over Joe's face, softening his mouth so it fell and pulled the corners of his eyes down with it. Marvelous wallowed in relief when he pulled them back up with anger. “It's not about bait!”

Marvelous puffed out his chest, at ease in anger and confrontation. “Then what's it about? Doc's fine. I'm fine. I made a good homing beacon. The plan's an imperfect success.”

Joe's shoulders raised up with his breath and his face hardened. He wanted to say something, and Marvelous' mind provided a dozen possible somethings. He didn't like any of them.

'What?' Marvelous wanted to say. 'You really jealous?'

He imagined how Joe's face would fall, or how it would pinch tighter together, and how he would slug him again or walk away, and he felt better. And worse. More worse.

Joe breathed out the word, “Fine,” before Marvelous could say anything stupid.

Just as the room started to settle, as words started form behind shut mouths, the console flickered and the view screen announced an incoming transmission. With Doc slowly slipping under from exertion and pain relievers, Joe took it on himself to answer. Released, Marvelous gravitated toward the sofa and flopped onto it. Doc turned his head around to smile at him, shaky and clouded over with worry like his smiles tended to be. But appreciated, returned with a tired smile of his own.

“You're really okay?” Gai asked from his spot on the floor beside Doc.

“M'fine.” Marvelous nudged Gai in the shoulder with his knee. He would have kicked him if he had the energy, but he was plummeting fast.

“He didn't hurt you?” Gai was picking at the frayed tassel trim on his stupid scarf.

Marvelous held a wrist up to examine it, taking in the places where the cuff had bitten into his skin. The things left impressions even after Ahim got them cut off, but that was all. “This? It's nothing.”

Gai picked a fiber out of his scarf and looked at it. Not at Marvelous. “Yeah, but.”

Already, Marvelous was good and sick of people thinking stuff and dancing around it.

“No,” he said, eventually. “He didn't hurt me.”

Entirely too much tension flowed out of the room in that moment. It was like opening an air lock into open space; it all went rushing out to split apart to nothing in a vacuum.

Navi came flapping over from her perch on Marvelous' chair, the first to move and try to chase off the silence. She lighted on the back of the sofa, over Marvelous' shoulder. “Anyway! As far as I'm concerned, it's just good Marvelous is back and everybody's okay. Right?”

“Yep!” Marvelous threw his arms behind his head for a pillow and resisted the urge to make a footrest of Gai. He cast a look at Joe's back, stooped slightly over the console. “What's the news, Mr. Gibken?”

“The space cops had some trouble with those things getting aboard their ship, but it's handled. Looks like their video capability's compromised. They're sending typed messages only.”

“What's he say?” Marvelous sat up straighter, wary of the threat of sleep pulling him under if he got too comfortable. His whole head felt heavy.

Joe tapped at the console in silence for a second before he turned away from it and crossed his arms. “They're on their way.”

“The Hell for?” Marvelous asked, too drowsy to cuff Gai for the delighted noise he made.

“Dinner,” Joe replied, dryly, as he approached the couch. He looked down at Doc. “I'll cook. I could use something to do.”

“I'm not hosting a freaking dinner party,” Marvelous said. He had trouble putting heat behind his voice.

“But we are eating dinner,” Joe said, his expression impassive and cool.

“Whatever.” Marvelous let his eyes shut and frowned deeply.

“And you're going to rest.” Apparently Joe saw the lull in confrontation as his chance to get pushy.

“Not tired.”

“I am!” Gai said, leaning into Marvelous' knee. Marvelous looked down to see Gai smiling a smile that was far too wise. It had the rolling undercurrent of worry Doc's usually did. It pleaded. Marvelous hated it.

“Good for you.” Marvelous started to rise, only to find himself pinned by one foot by Doc's backside. He scrunched up his face and poised to cuff him in the head. “Hey.”

“Sorry,” Doc said, a little too much cheek in his tone. “If it's not too much trouble, could you not disturb me while I rest? I know it's inconvenient.”

“Now, look-”

“Would my claiming a space on the sofa disturb you, doctor?” Ahim asked. She was already crossing the room when Marvelous opened his mouth to try and shout her back to the table. “The light at the dining table is simply unsuitable for reading.”

“More like mood lighting,” Luka said. And, God damn it, she made a bee line for the couch right behind Ahim. “Good for dinner, bad for work.”

They flanked him and each took a shoulder to shove back onto the couch.

“Guys.”

“We will do our best not to disturb your rest,” Ahim said, fitting herself very close to him on his right side. She opened her heavy book on her lap.

“Just don't drool on my shoulder,” Luka said as she wedged him in on the left. “There's a serious fine for that.”

Marvelous grunted and shoved Luka with his shoulder. He earned a hard strike in the chest for that, and it took the fight out of him.

Joe, who had watched all this unfold from where he leaned on the mast, joined the cluster briefly to step between Marvelous' knees and give him a light, back slapping hug. Marvelous didn't fight it.

“Sleep well,”Joe said. The words, already soft, muffled in Marvelous' shoulder before Joe pulled back.

Eventually, he did.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, I couldn't just leave you with the cliffhanger of poor Don in danger. I felt bad enough hurting him already, I couldn't hurt you guys on top of that. (●´艸`)
> 
> Keep an eye out next update for something I've been calling the DVD extra in all my notes. What is it? Oh, you'll have to wait and see.
> 
> Speaking of things to see, I've established [a blog](http://kacchiandsuch.blogspot.com/) that you can follow via email/bookmark as a means of getting updates about my posting schedule and progress through my projects. I'll also be recapping/discussing tokusatsu series if that's to your interest. 
> 
> See you in five to seven days, hosers.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why's it so late? My laptop, my phone, and my replacement phone exploded in rapid succession, and then my bank account exploded in the process of fixing/replacing them. Will the next installment be late? I hope the heck not! In penance, this chapter is extra long!

The whole place smelled good. Like, really good. Joe couldn't cook a whole lot of things, the category of baking excepted, but the few things he'd learned to cook always filled the Galleon's living areas with simple, savory smells that reminded Gai of how grandmothers cooked.

Joe would probably punch him in the face if he ever said that, though.

Even with all the smells rolling out of the galley, Marvelous was still fast asleep behind him. He and Don had stayed on as the remaining sentries for their captain. The others gave him around forty minutes to get truly and deeply asleep before sneaking off. Pirates could be selectively pragmatic that way.

Don was asleep, too, leaning on Marvelous' knee. Gai found himself not exactly enjoying the sight for once. Seeing Don in any state more sedate than a full nervous frenzy made Gai a little uneasy at the moment.

They'd all come close to death. Frequently, recently. Pirates or Super Sentai, it was a risk they'd all accepted. Either life was dangerous, would always be dangerous. This time felt different, and Gai didn't want to admit it only felt different because he'd been very seriously considering kissing Don earlier that day. That was... that was embarrassing. It was too sappy for a pirate and way, way too selfish for a Sentai member.

But wouldn't letting Don-

He swallowed and flattened out his mouth to forge ahead through the thought.

Wouldn't it be terrible and unfair if Don died without knowing he was precious to somebody?

Yeah. Precious to someone. Loved.

That half of the thought, the soft-love-feelings-for-another-guy half, was almost as difficult as the death part. He'd been stupid – and determined, and enthusiastic – and gotten burned before. And the most he ever heard of in-team relationships was the occasional marriage, which. Well.

A kaleidoscope of emotions played out over his face for no one to witness as he thought all these things, until it settled on an expression that was at once startled and contemplative. He looked like a very thoughtful goldfish with his wide eyes and pursed lips.

But, the face-stilling thought offered, things were clearly... 'different' in space. The girls were the most obvious example, even if Don had had to spell out to him (very gently) that their relationship wasn't exactly a sisterly one. It all made sense in retrospect.

Then there was Joe, and Marvelous, and certain other things Gai couldn't bring himself to think about right that second. Don was right in front of him, coasting through a deep, drugged sleep using Marvelous' knee as a pillow. It was easier to watch his face and fret than it was to think about... other stuff.

But then he wound up watching Don's face shift subtly in sleep, thinking about losing him, thinking about letting him die ignorant because he was scared.

“Just do it already so I can get up.”

Gai seized up and made a muted squeak like he'd stepped on a tack in the dark. Marvelous, droopy-eyed, looked down at him.

“I wasn't-” Gai sat up straight and tried to look nonchalant. And noble. And chaste. And a lot of things. “Uh, do what?”

Marvelous rolled his eyes. “Look,” he said, keeping his tone lower than Gai knew he was able. “I wanna go scrounging and I got no patience for games. Do it and lemme leave.”

Gai scrunched up his face. “Not while you're here.”

“I'll kick you both off.”

He didn't, but Gai didn't doubt he would eventually. He just crossed his arms, leveled a look at Gai, and waited.

“At least don't watch.”

Marvelous rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and sighed.

Gai squirmed, looking between Marvelous' crossed arms and Don's face. Don's really, really cute face.

This wasn't like his daydreams at all. Marvelous wasn't looming around in those, first of all, and Don wasn't hurt. Sometimes monsters were involved, but not monsters like this.

Marvelous gave him a warning toe jab and growled.

Gai flinched and bunched his shoulders up. “Okay, okay. Man.” He took a centering breath and inched closer to Don, who so far hadn't responded to the quiet commotion beside and around him at all.

A forehead kiss was enough for now. Even if, in all honesty, he'd been very noble and princely that day and could totally get away with more. Totally. Even so, it took him several painful moments of hovering with pursed lips over Don's face before he made contact.

If Marvelous hadn't been around he would have squealed at how soft and fluffy Don's hair was, but he contained himself to making tight fists and grinning so big his face hurt. Don made a small sound as his eyes fluttered open, and Gai got even closer to squealing.

And then Marvelous booted them both out of the way, and they both squawked instead. “Well, I'm done here,” Marvelous said as he sauntered for the galley. “You two have fun.”

“Hey, come on!” Gai, his face burning, glowered at Marvelous' back. He stowed his anger for the time being – which meant it would just fizzle out before he had time to do anything with it – and turned his attention to Don. “Jeez. Are you okay, Don-san?”

Don nodded. He wouldn't meet Gai's eyes. Uh oh. “I'm all right.” He touched the tender spot under his ribs and winced. “Yeah, all in one piece. Say, Gai?”

“Yes?” Gai sat up straight, hands on his knees. His voice was way too high for his liking.

“Did you wake me up before Marvelous kicked me?”

Sweat broke out on the back of Gai's neck. “Yeah.”

“Oh.” Don put his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Thanks.”

“Thanks?”

Don nodded and gathered himself up. “I- I'd better go help Joe. It's not fair he has to cook.”

Gai, not really thinking, reached out to snag Don's wrist as he started for the galley. “Don! ...Ah, Don-san.”

Don's hand curled up. “Yes?”

“I really like you!” The words practically fired out of his mouth. He grabbed both Don's hands and held them in his own. This was the way to do it, right? High enthusiasm! Make sure he knows it's true, even if he doesn't return it! “And I know this is probably- This is _definitely_ the worst possible time, but after today I couldn't just not tell you.”

Don's wobbly expression tried to pull itself up into a smile. “Well.” He closed his hands around Gai's and fidgeted in place. “Maybe it's not the  _worst_ time.”

Gai blinked. “I don't get it.”

Don shifted from foot to foot, and Gai could tell he would much rather be tearing off to the galley to hide in Joe's kill zone aura. But he was still holding his hands. So that was good. “It's been a hard day. Everybody else is gravitating toward one another, right?”

“Yeah, but-” Gai cut himself off, recalling the girls' ascent to the crow's nest and just how impatient Marvelous was to go join Joe in the galley. And how he'd very recently walked in on their apparent sleepover. His eyes and mouth became Os. “Oh. Oh!”

Don's smile was wide under shifting eyes. His face was red. He cast a wary glance at the door to the galley. Marvelous was not presiding. Thankfully. “I'm glad you did something. Otherwise, I probably... wouldn't have.” Don squeezed Gai's hands and looked down at them. “So, I meant it. Thank you.”

For once, Gai was the one with sweaty palms. And a big grin that listed hard to one side, but that wasn't exactly new. “So you like me?”

Don nodded again. By now even his ears were pink. “Pretty dumb, huh? Even after today, I couldn't imagine-”

“It's not dumb!” Gai broke in. He pulled Don closer so that their hands were clasped between their chests. He was dimly aware of how they'd rearranged themselves into a position that would fit better in a girls' manga panel than an epic pirate adventure. “It's good to be scared about stuff like that, it means it's important to you! And you were really cool and brave today, so don't you even try to feel stupid!”

“Gai.” Don's fingers tightened around Gai's and his expression turned soft and warm. Gai's did the same, and he couldn't help but think about Don's fluffy hair and his smooth skin and cute he looked when he was asleep.

Gai was so lost in thought, in fact, that he didn't notice the encroaching – if subtle – mechanical sounds that preceded Navi's flapping right between their faces.

“'Scuse me, lovebirds.”

“Hey!” Gai swiped at her to no avail. She was already winging up the stairs by the time he shook his brain free of his gooey reverie. “Way to spoil a moment!”

“Whatever,” Navi trilled, her voice ringing down from the deck above. “I'm gonna go tell Luka she lost a bet!”

Gai and Don looked to one another, then at the stairs. “Bet?”

\---

“You still mad?” Marvelous leaned on the wall to the left of the galley's door and watched Joe putter his way through making dinner. He'd watched for a while, staring at Joe's back, before he spoke up.

“Nah.” Joe smoothed a sheet of foil over the big platter of steaks Marvelous had spent the past five minutes or so smelling and eying. The galley smelled of red meat and chocolate, and it was enough to make Marvelous feel downright cheery. This was in no small part due to a history of crew members parting easier with treats when he was playful and friendly. “No point in staying mad when you're alive.”

“Were you gonna hold a grudge against a ghost?”

“No.” Joe upended a bowl of apple slices into another, larger bowl. Salad, probably, because it was easy like steak was easy. There were potatoes in one of the ovens, too. Marvelous had yet to see them, but steaming starch and crisping skin had a distinctive smell he could pick out. And there was cake, because it was Joe so of course there was cake.

“Then what's with the cold shoulder?” Marvelous asked, creeping toward the foiled platter. He had (mostly) smothered any suspicion of misunderstanding on Joe's part, but he couldn't keep his tone totally nonchalant.

Joe slid the platter out of Marvelous' reach and tossed the salad. It was huge, probably to make up for the unanticipated guest. “Those are resting. Hands off.” He pushed the big bowl aside and shucked off his apron. Doc's apron, really. “And I'm mad because you could be dead.”

“Thought you said you weren't mad,” Marvelous said, putting on what he knew to be a very punchable smile.

Joe's eyes widened and narrowed again. He whipped his apron at Marvelous, who caught it and dutifully hung it by the door. “You still never tell me what the Hell you're up to half the time. How am I supposed to do my job?”

“Would you have agreed to that plan?”

Joe huffed. “No. That doesn't mean I couldn't help. There were so many alternatives, and you did the stupidest thing possible.” A ping from the little timer set on the counter summoned him to the oven door. “Was grabbing my butt always part of the plan?”

Marvelous' smile grew wider and more punchable. “That part was improvised at the last minute.”

“When I kissed you.” Joe rose from his stoop by the oven, carrying a pan with eight little ramekins on it. They smelled very strongly of chocolate, and Marvelous didn't even have to wonder if the extra one was for him. The red tinge spreading over Joe's otherwise placid face was more distracting than food, though. 

“Yeah.” The please-punch-me edge smoothed out of Marvelous' smile at the memory. 

“So.” Joe looked his way without turning his head. Maybe he hoped Marvelous wouldn't notice. “Was that what you had in mind when you told me to sit still?”

Marvelous jutted out his chin and smirked. “Yep!” he said in a voice that might as well have asked, 'What about it?'

“How like you,” Joe said. When he let himself turn Marvelous' way, his expression was so cool and cocky in contrast to his pink ears that Marvelous almost laughed. The way he folded his arms didn't help at all. 

“Afraid I don't follow,” Marvelous said, taking a step toward him – and toward the food.

_'Maybe I can be bribed out of punishing you, hm?'_

Marvelous swallowed around the memory and tasted dirt. Joe's expression thawed and Marvelous' stomach turned. How well could Joe make out his pitiful expression in the limited light of the engine room? How much did he recognize in the flash that played out across his face at the invasive memory of the counter's edge biting into the small of his back?

“You know what I mean,” Joe said, pulling the cool shade back down over his face. The concern didn't leave his eyes, so Marvelous directed his gaze away from them. “Just doing what you want with no real plan.”

“Plans make stuff like that boring. Besides...”

Besides what?

“Besides, how many nights were we supposed to share a bed before it happened?” Joe said, making equal effort not to meet Marvelous' eyes. He was smiling, just a little, and Marvelous really wanted to see how their mouths fit together with Joe smiling like that.

“Yeah.” Marvelous sighed the word through his smirking mouth and shifted his weight. “Or the crow's nest.”

“Or the crow's nest.”

Gai's voice split the short silence that followed. “Marvelous-san! Company!”

Marvelous slumped, roared, “Come on!” and stormed out of the galley. “We'll finish this later.”

Gavan was waiting by the couch. Directly in front of it, actually. He didn't strike Marvelous as the kind of guy who liked to sit down if he could help it.

“Sheriff,” Marvelous said, swaggering up to him. He made a show of appraising the wrapped something-or-other in one of Gavan's arms. A bottle, probably, but Earthlings tended to wrap things so extravagantly that it was downright hard to identify and judge gifts at a glance.

“Commander, now, technically,” Gavan said. 

Gai and Doc scurried past Marvelous and into the galley. Weird for Gai to pass up a chance to hang off a hero.

Marvelous stretched his smirk higher. “You outrank me now, huh?”

“I didn't know pirates cared about rank.” Gavan stepped up to him and for a second Marvelous was a little afraid he'd try to shake hands. Like this really was a dinner party.

“On a case by case basis.” Marvelous stuffed his hands in his coat pockets. “What's with the peace offering?”

Gavan extended the wrapped thing and Marvelous took it, privately pleased when it sloshed heavily. “It's a custom on Earth to bring a gift when you show up to be a bother. For some people, that's every time. For me, it's case by case.”

“Good policy,” Marvelous said, turning the bottle in his hands. It was too easy to fall into personable conversation with Gavan. “What's under all the sparkly paper?”

“A red wine from Earth. I understand pirates like to drink as much as anyone else.”

“We do, but you're not here to drink and chat.”

“I'm not, but your crew tells me I arrived at dinner time.”

Marvelous disguised the roll of his eyes as a sideways glance at the galley door. “Yeah, well, there's more on my mind than food now so how about you spill it before the dinner bell rings?”

“If you stand around chatting, your dinner's gonna get cold and you'll be crabby all evening.” Joe appeared from the galley, tailed by Doc and Gai. Each carried a bowl or platter. “So just sit down and posture while you eat.”

Marvelous sauntered to his seat and thumped the bottle onto the table. The noise made Doc jump. “Fine, but this guy better bring info with his sparkly booze.”

Gavan followed and seated himself to the left of Marvelous' place at the head of the table. Marvelous wanted to chase him away, but only a little. “I'm afraid the closest I've got are some updates on the situation at hand.”

Marvelous grunted and watched Doc set out the plates. The girls, Navi included, came down the stairs at around that time. They exchanged pleasantries with Gavan – well, everyone but Luka did – while Marvelous sulked in his chair.

“So you're just here to eat my food,” Marvelous said in as dry a voice as he could manage with Joe heaping food on his plate. 

“And to check in,” Gavan said. “I understand you had some trouble of your own while I was preoccupied.”

“The less said about that, the better,” Marvelous said. He propped his feet up on the spare chair to his right, only to have them knocked aside by Joe so he could sit down. “It's sorted out. That's all that matters.”

As it turned out, that wasn't all that mattered. On top of that, things were far from sorted, at least on Gavan's side of things. Over their tense dinner – during which no one touched Gavan's fancy wrapped-up wine – they learned that those phantoms had found some way to sneak aboard the space cops' ship. They suffered no losses, but it took entirely too long to root them all out.

Marvelous kept his suspicion that they'd been dispatched as a distraction to himself. He wasn't interested in pulling Gavan any further into his business, anyway. He wanted information if he could get it, but Gavan seemed determined to spend more time chewing than talking. That is, until the food was gone and Doc sprang up to start collecting everyone's dishes. Then, Gavan got this restless look about him. It was subtle, but not subtle enough that Marvelous was surprised when Gavan asked to talk to him alone.

He was less surprised when Joe tried to include himself under the umbrella of 'alone.'

Even less surprised to feel Joe's frustrated gaze boring into his back as he headed up the stairs with Gavan.

Above deck, it was a clear and cold night. In all Marvelous' time spent on Earth – more time than he'd spent consecutively or collectively on any planet – he'd developed an appreciation for clear nights. The chill, he appreciated less.

“You can hardly tell anything happened at ground level from up here,” Gavan said as he emerged from the stairs just behind Marvelous.

“Altitude'll do that.” Marvelous strode to the ship's edge and looked out over the city. The strip of orange around the crater was absent, replaced with a strip of darkness in an otherwise bright cityscape. Burnt out buildings with no electric.

Gavan's steps came up behind him, then beside him. “Did you ever imagine you'd be coming back to Earth?”

Marvelous snorted. “We've been back. Otherwise Gai'd go nuts. And I didn't come up here for a wistful chat with an old man. What do you want?”

Again, that restlessness emerged in Gavan's posture and features. Marvelous watched him the way he watched shady folks in bars and ports: sidelong, with pretended disinterest.

“I've been a dishonest man.” Gavan touched Marvelous' shoulder, and Marvelous allowed it. “My judgment is usually better than this, and I'm sorry.”

Marvelous' lip curled and he raised an eyebrow, waiting for some kind of elaboration. The revelation came as a deft sweep of Gavan's fingers under the strap on Marvelous' shoulder, as the rasp of something affixed coming free, as a small device held out in Gavan's hand. It was small, black, round and flat like a button, and flashed a dim indicator light in its center.

Marvelous didn't exactly recognize it as a bug from sight alone, but the placement and the look on Gavan's face made it impossible to reach any other conclusion.

_'You didn't want to risk them seeing anything like that, did you?'_

Marvelous' skin flashed cold and then roiling hot under his clothes and he could feel anger doing terrible things to his face. Gavan appeared unmoved, or at least unafraid. He pocketed the bug and took a step back. Marvelous lunged at him and told himself it was anger that drove him forward.

Gavan took the fist to his face without flinching, and Marvelous found himself disappointed. Even watching Gavan's head jerk to one side and warmer color bloom under his skin did nothing. It wasn't fun, wasn't therapeutic, if Gavan didn't mind getting hit.

All it got him was sore knuckles.

Marvelous shook his hand out, made himself breathe. He tried to keep the panic from bleeding through his skin. Gavan, his gaze as purposeful as ever, waited.

“You're right to do that,” Gavan said, after a moment. 

“Bastard,” Marvelous sneered, the word too raw in his throat to sound as harsh as he wanted.

Gavan squared his shoulders. “I caved to pressure from above. It was a mistake, but you have to understand how seriously Earth authorities take anything related to Zangyack. And you can't tell me you would have volunteered any knowledge you have.”

Marvelous shifted his weight onto one foot, trying to look nonchalant. He couldn't quite make his face to the right things, though. In his shifting, his hands found the gunwale and gripped it. He focused his gaze on the city below, always trailing toward the gouge a single Zangyack ship had taken out of it. Of course Earthlings took this seriously.

But Gavan could have asked.

Not that Marvelous would have been helpful.

“I wish I could give you the option of terminating my involvement in this.” Gavan's voice booted him out of his reflections. Gavan moved into his periphery vision and Marvelous watched him. He'd slap his hand away if he went in to touch his shoulder again, so help him. “But I won't be turning that recording in. We all suspected you had some prior ties to the situation, but if I'd suspected... anything else, I wouldn't have agreed.”

“Anything else.” Again, the words came dry and raw from his throat. Even full of sleep and food, he was too tired for this. 

“Your relationship to that man,' Gavan said, after some time.

The words rolled off Marvelous' back. He shrugged and scoffed. “That's not some old flame I'm looking to rekindle and protect from you, if that's what you're thinking.”

Gavan shook his head and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his weathered jacket. “Of course not,” he said. “But he's committed his share of crimes against you, hasn't he?”

“Yeah. You could say that.”

Of all the vague and gentle passes people kept taking at what had happened, this came closest to forgiving Marvelous from saying it himself to dispel the awkward, mincing tenderness.

He'd tried to say it to Joe. He'd tried to ask when it stopped being his fault, what things were or weren't? Whose fault was it that he let his curiosity invite the bastard aboard? Who let him in?

Whose trust and pride let him keep pushing and pushing even after the initial curiosity died?

Who forced him to keep propping that trust back up in the times in between?

It was his fault, and for Marvelous that had become just fine a while ago.

It was fine.

He'd done his part to atone blowing the bastard away.

How could he have expected him to come back?

Gavan breathed in and out in the silence. Marvelous could practically feel the air around him quaking with waves of nerves thrown off his body. Good. Let someone else be uncomfortable for a while.

“I've had other mistakes on my mind, lately,” Gavan said, finally. 

Marvelous' breath was a rolling stream of white on the exhale. It broke around his face. He let it roll off on a gust before he spoke. “If you're trying to change the subject, do it faster. Young men aren't patient.”

“Back then, I wonder if letting you out of my sight was the right choice.”

Marvelous' mouth tugged up in a smirk. So he'd inflamed the old man's protective drive. Fine. “What would you do? Civilize me and raise me to be a space cop?”

“Who can say?” Gavan wore a lighter expression, too, if similarly wry. “You came around to peacekeeping in the end, didn't you?”

“Don't lose sleep over me,” Marvelous said.

“Too late.” Gavan set a hand on Marvelous' shoulder. Marvelous didn't bother swatting it away. “It's harder to look forward if I dwell on that, but knowing that doesn't stop me from remembering and wondering from time to time.”

“Guess not,” Marvelous muttered. Even with the subject shifted, just speaking pulled the energy out of him.

Gavan patted his shoulder, just once, and took a merciful step back. “I'll be in contact,” he said. “We can't exactly work together as a team on this, but consider us your support. And the Super Sentai of Earth, too.”

“Sure.” Marvelous turned to face Gavan, leaning back against the gunwale to let the wind lick through his hair.”You said your piece, or do you want a hug?”

Gavan's smirk broadened into a smile. “I guess it bears mentioning that I had a trusted partner, myself, in my younger years.”

Marvelous raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms. “Why's that matter? Did he commit crimes against you or something?”

“She became my wife.” Gavan pivoted and made his way down the stairs, tossing his signature wave behind him. “Don't hesitate unnecessarily, Mr. Showy.”

Warmth bloomed behind Marvelous' ears. “Hey!” He started for Gavan and stopped, more content to brood in the moonlight for a while than to bring this conversation downstairs.

\---

It wasn't unusual for Marvelous to summon him to his cabin. It wasn't even unusual for him to holler up the stairs for him and stalk back to wait, like he couldn't be bothered to come upstairs or call.

It was only a little weird for him to do it in the middle of the night. Joe was brushing out his hair when four sharp thwacks on his cabin door alerted him to Marvelous' presence in the hall. He jumped and pretended he didn't.

“What?” Joe tied his hair back up and crossed to the door. No answer.

He opened it.

No Marvelous, either. At the end of the hall, the heavy door to the captain's cabin thumped shut. Joe frowned and turned to retrieve his shirt from the back of his chair, tugging it on as he made his way down the hall.

He didn't even knock. Seeing as Marvelous was wide awake, he shouldn't have to give advance warning.

And it wasn't as if this was unusual in anyway. It was only the surrounding circumstances that drew the blood so close to the surface of Joe's skin. It was the memory of that goodbye-forgive-me kiss that made his skin prickle in the air that felt so cool against it. It was other, darker memories that kept his core cold and tight in contrast to his blood-warm outer shell.

He was so lost in the warm thoughts and the dark thoughts that he walked straight into Marvelous when he stepped into the room. Marvelous was a solid, immovable obstruction even dressed down to his shirt and pants. He didn't need the coat and boots and weapons to stop Joe – or anyone – in his tracks.

It was unusual, Joe had the presence of mind to note, for Marvelous to stand right inside the door and not await Joe's arrival in the chair by the desk.

The room directly behind Marvelous was lit low, normal enough for the evenings when everyone was winding down for bed.

Only the situation made it feel different.

That was all.

“Watch it,” Joe said, stepping to one side. Marvelous' body left a broad, mostly imagined patch of warmth on Joe where they'd collided.

His eyes followed him and spoke volumes where his mouth wouldn't. Marvelous was silent; he had no retaliatory barb prepared. His body soon followed his eyes, leaning and reaching for Joe. Joe froze. Marvelous' fingers tangled and hooked in the fabric of his shirt, and for a moment Joe wondered if he meant to take it off him.

As it turned out, the shirt was only a grip, a handle to pull him closer. Marvelous' fingertips dug in deep, pressing warm and eager into the fabric to rake along Joe's skin as they clenched and pulled, but they didn't lift. They only pulled, forward, not up.

Marvelous' body met him again, softer this time, and warmer. His eyes reflected the brighter light from the hallway. The door stood open behind Joe.

Without turning, he kicked it shut behind him.

“How about a little more than a kiss this time?” Marvelous asked. His hands uncurled to smooth over Joe's back. Had he suddenly become aware of the way they grasped and clung to him?

Joe swallowed. “How much more?” His arms raised to loop around Marvelous despite the doubt that rose out of his lips.

What he wanted to ask, what he didn't dare ask Marvelous and could only wonder to himself, was how much was too much. How much would mean taking advantage of a delicate situation?

Marvelous didn't give him time to think. “Lots, if you wanna,” he said, pressing closer and smiling in a sweet, asking way that seemed wrong but looked so right on him. “How about it?”

The warmth across Joe's skin sank deeper, soaking him. He pressed his lips together and wondered if the low, warm lighting in the cabin would betray his face's shift to red.

“Only if you wanna,” Marvelous pressed, the nonchalance in his voice faltering halfway through the short sentence. His arms slackened and his hold on Joe loosened, but the tension in his shoulders remained.

The spot of cold in Joe's middle tightened and hardened, threatened to crack. This hesitation wasn't normal, was it?

But, the rational warmth wrapped around that frigid core offered, none of this was normal or usual. The part of Joe that was present, here in this moment and not back behind the air lock screaming for Marvelous or holding him in the engine room, recognized this for the strange new thing that it was. For him, for Marvelous.

Had Marvelous ever allowed himself to come to someone like this? Would he start this if he had any misgivings about finishing it?

Before Marvelous could pull away like he'd tried to do that morning, Joe tightened his hold on him and tucked his chin into his shoulder to speak against his neck.

“Of course I want to.” He felt Marvelous' face come alive in a big smile and smothered his own in the collar of his shirt. His heart beat hard in his chest, panicked but elated, and he wondered if Marvelous could feel it. “I've wanted to.”

Marvelous' fingers curled in Joe's shirt and he pressed a kiss to Joe's neck. Joe started, suddenly flushed hot and cold at once, and then settled. There was a comfort he hadn't expected to need in this, in fitting together like this. Maybe that was true for Marvelous, too.

Marvelous' cabin may have been larger than the others, but it wasn't a big enough room that it took them long to find themselves on the bed. It was just easiest to settle there, after all. Joe wasn't about to sit in Marvelous' lap at the desk. They sat upright for a bit, holding each other, kissing up necks and around the rims of mouths. When their lips did meet, Marvelous came in too hard and bashed their noses together in a way that made Joe sputter and pull back. He didn't even apologize, but Joe didn't expect that. The sputtering turned to laughter he could only release as a wobbly smile and a shudder in his shoulders.

He defaulted to silence in these situations. Military life was Hell on privacy.

“You do better, if you're gonna laugh,” Marvelous said, as loud as he ever was. He looked offended and sounded amused, and Joe couldn't decide which was an act.

Joe leaned in. Marvelous fell back onto the bed, out of reach, smiling, inviting. Joe's mouth dried and he made himself speak anyway. “I could.”

Marvelous tugged at the front of Joe's shirt, beckoning him down. “Then quit stalling.”

Joe followed the pull and the command, leaning down and throwing one leg over Marvelous to pin him to the bed with his hips. Belatedly, he made himself pointedly aware of Marvelous' face, of any tension in his body, of the cast of his eyes and the shape of his mouth. He found his face open, waiting, wanting. Trusting. His smile was small, maybe a little uncertain, but it was real.

Joe propped himself up on one arm, suspended over Marvelous, and reached back with his spare hand to unfasten the leather strip that tied his hair. He leaned down as it fell free to shield their faces in a black curtain.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, as usual! Stay tuned for *drum roll* the bawdy part! Which is upcoming rather soon, and will be uploaded as a separate story as part of this 'series' so that people who don't want bawdy things/browse with the bawdiness filter on can still find and enjoy the main story. Kudos, comments, and eternal curses on my name are always, always welcome.
> 
> Ah, yes, and I have additional surprises in store.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I call this chapter "Holy crap, I literally need to post something even if I'm not satisfied with it because I went through an unexpected dark night of the soul with this story and people are actually waiting to read it and I'm being a dick just re-writing it over and over." I'm so grateful to you guys for your patience and continued support. This has over 450 hits and that's terrifying. Okay. Moving on.
> 
> In less infuriating news, the kind and giving and wonderful and talented aquabluejay has drawn fanart of this fanfic (what??) and it's absolutely cute as heck! Please enjoy [this awesome illustration of Marvelous performing a sleight of hand kiss/butt grab on Joe](http://aquabluejay.tumblr.com/post/133743680415/aquabluejay-fanart-for-katsuras-a-dream-that).

Gai was up late for a lot of reasons he had to keep justifying to himself as he fluttered around the galley. First, the past few days had been exhausting and stressful in ways Gai never, ever wanted to deal with, so he was extra tired. Second, he'd been lucky enough to spend a whole lot of the night talking with Don and distracting him from his research and, well, everything else. Third, nobody had come to wake them. Sure, Gai didn't exactly mind that everybody had spontaneously decided to sleep in, but waking up late – even if he woke up with Don leaning on him and sunlight coming through the port holes and-

Anyway, it meant a late start on breakfast. Which, as it had the last few times he and Don got a late start on the day, meant pancakes. Sure, Gai's mom always said pancakes were practically dessert and not breakfast, but in light of everything else going on a fast breakfast that would cheer everyone up won out over nutrition.

Maybe that's why the pancakes were chocolate on top of being, well, cake made in a pan. Gai hadn't met anybody who didn't like chocolate, so that was a sure win. But Marvelous liked it especially, and Marvelous was in special need of cheering up. It took a little longer to make them like that, but it would be totally worth the wait if Marvelous got even the least little bit excited about them.

Gai made a tight fist around the spatula he'd been using to turn the pancakes and grinned to himself. Yeah. This was an awesome plan.

“Ah, figured you'd be up first!” Luka chirped, having suddenly appeared in the doorway. She walked into Gai's peripheral vision, stretching. 

It was only a matter of time before the smell of starch and sugar on a hot griddle brought the others out like sharks to pick a carcass. Gai couldn't even be annoyed.

“Morning, Luka-san,” he said. He gingerly reeled the plate of finished pancakes out of her immediate reach. “You're up later than usual.”

Luka's eyebrows jumped up and she snatched the topmost pancake. Because of course. “What's that supposed to mean? I don't see you giving Doc grief for being conked out on the couch.”

“Don's been working really hard and needs the rest!” Gai said. He picked the plate up and flopped three more cakes onto it. Obviously, he wouldn't be mentioning staying up chatting and watching stuff on the laptop he'd brought along from Earth. Gai finally had a boyfriend – you know, kind of, basically – and they spent their first night together like twelve year olds spend sleepovers. It didn't occur to him to be disappointed.

“Yeah, well, I've been playing hard and I need an energy boost,” Luka said as she arranged herself on the edge of the counter. She folded her pancake up and packed half of it into her mouth. “So. Where's Marvelous if you're making dessert for breakfast?”

Gai absolutely did not want to talk about Marvelous with Luka at the moment, but it wasn't as if he had a choice. He ladled out the last of the batter into neat circles on the griddle and performed his best shrug. “Getting some sleep, finally, I guess! You think he'll like getting breakfast in bed?”

“What is he, your mom?” Luka asked around the second half of her pancake. She reached for another and Gai ooched himself and the plate backward. 

“I just figured he'd like some special treatment with all that's going on,” Gai said, the enthusiasm in his voice threatening to fail him. His shoulders dropped. “That's not a bad idea, right?”

Luka's interest in the pancakes dissolved, and she folded her arms. “No, it's fine.” She pursed her lips. “He likes being spoiled a lot more than he lets on, so I doubt he'll take it too bad.”

“I hope so.” Gai scooped the last pancakes onto a separate, smaller plate and set the larger plate by Luka. “Those are for everybody, okay? I mean, except Marvelous-san. Point is, don't eat all of them.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Luka said. She shook out her hair and Gai suddenly realized how weird it was to see her before she'd taken the time to style it. Stress made people sloppy, sure, but still. Weird. “Me and Ahim can split them.”

Gai made a warbling whine that was only half pretended. “Luka-san!”

“Get going, he's gonna complain if you bring him cold food.”

“I am going!” Gai set the plate down on a tray he'd loaded up with a fork and a big glass of milk before taking the whole thing out into the common room. Navi buzzed by him, and he instinctively hunched around the food. That didn't make sense, considering Navi was a robot and not a hungry buzzard, but these pancakes were special and totally in danger until he got them to Marvelous.

“Well, look who's up!” She hovered over his shoulder as he made his way to the stairs, her head rocking from side to side in a robotic display of dismay. “I can finally sit on my favorite roost without feeling awkward again!”

Gai ducked his head and grinned. “Robots feel awkward?”

“They do when there's a canoodling couple on every deck of the ship, most specifically the place with the comfiest place to take a nap!”

Gai blinked and looked over his shoulder. “Eh?”

Suddenly, Navi ceased her frantic flapping. “Oh. Oh! Forget I said anything!”

And like that, she was gone back up the stairs, presumably to chatter at Luka. Gai uncurled and straightened his neck. Of all the people to give him grief about, well, not canoodling, but definitely something, with Don, he never expected Navi.

Marvelous' door was never locked, at least not whenever Gai tried it. That was fine, though, because it made it super easy to just swing the door open, strut right in, and surprise him!

Well, it should have been easy.

“Marvelous-san! Wake up, I brought you breakfa- Aaaah!”

Gai's brain took a perfect photo of the split second between the door opening and Joe's face snapping up to glower at him. Marvelous – who was the only person who was supposed to be there, as far as Gai knew, assuming the last time was a fluke – fast asleep, legs bare way too far past his knees for Gai's comfort, lying on his side facing the door. Joe propped up on one elbow, just as obviously naked, smiling placidly down at him. It was cute. And terrifying.

“Sorry to have disturbed you!” Gai managed to sputter out while he hid behind the door. He could practically feel Joe's eyes boring into it. His brain crackled and fizzed, caught between delight at having caught such a sweet, endearing moment and the suspicion that he'd never wipe the memory of Too Much Legs from his mind.

Then there was the possibility of Joe murdering him. Or at least noogying him very, very hard.

“Just leave the food, Gai,” Joe said, more exasperated than angry. Or maybe he was tired. Either way, Gai's chances of survival benefited. When Gai peered back into the room, Joe was putting his hair up in one of his handy ties.

Why did it feel like more of an intimate trespass seeing Joe with his hair hanging loose than seeing him (probably) naked?

Worse, Marvelous chose that moment to come around and sit up. Which disrupted the delicate blanket to skin ratio so drastically that Gai almost ducked out of the room again. “Mm? Whatcha got?”

“Pancakes.” Gai couldn't remember the last time he said something so quietly.

“Huh?”

“Pancakes! Cakes from a pan! They're good! How are you?”

“Fine.” Joe answered for the both of them and strode to the door with a sheet around his hips. He snatched the plate from Gai. Gai avoided his eyes. “I don't see Doc with you, so I guess we don't get answers with our pancakes.”

Gai wrung out his empty hands and shrugged. It wasn't like he'd been in the mood to pressure Don for the fruits of his research anyways. On top of that, to his shame, he'd been riding a little too high on having a hand to hold to remember they had a monster to fight. He could tell himself Don probably didn't want to talk about it either, but it didn't make him feel any better.

He did feel better when Joe returned to the bed, though. As better as he could feel. Marvelous springing up to grab the plate and dig in without so much as asking Joe to get him his shirt didn't make things any better.

“Long as he's got ideas, I don't care if I gotta go find him,” Marvelous said, the words slurred around his food. Gai stared at his sneakers. “You make these?”

“Yeah.”

Wet, smacky noises. “They're good! Now get out.”

Gai practically spun out into the hallway, too pleased to be released from Naked Pancake Hell.

\---

Marvelous had forgotten what it was like to enjoy being awake for having slept so well. Or well at all. The haze of contentment hung thick around him as the crew buzzed around Doc's little work table to hear his theories. It wasn't that he slept poorly in the crow's nest, or in Joe's bed. There was just something more in having Joe in his bed, assured and practically promised to him without all the awkward ambiguity of simply sleeping together. There could be no more wondering about what they were, and that made it hard to leave his bed that morning even after all the sleep he'd had.

“A plague?” Ahim had made tea for them all, but she was the only one drinking it. “By what logic have you come to that conclusion?”

“It's not my conclusion.” Doc swiped a finger around the rim of his cooling cup of tea. “It's the people who went to that planet before we did and found it empty. What else would you assume if you found signs of a civilization and no people?”

“That something got rid of 'em,” Luka said, dryly. “Zangyack wanted that thing as a weapon, right? Stands to reason it doesn't need a battleship to do some real damage.”

Doc gave a grim little nod. “And that Zangyack have more info on this thing than we do, considering they seemed to know... what to give it.”

“Yep.” Marvelous felt compelled to speak, and not because he had much to say. He gripped the arms of his chair and suddenly felt Joe's presence behind him very strongly. He wanted Joe's hand on his shoulder as he remembered the terrible haul up those crumbling steps, but he didn't want everyone to see.

Silence fell. No one wanted to say it. Nobody wanted to say Marvelous was the 'what' it wanted.

Except, now, maybe it wasn't.

“Say, Doc,” Marvelous said, folding his hands in front of him in an imitation of deep thought. “You find anything about that thing wanting anything that's on Earth?”

Doc shook his head. “If anyone has that information, it's the leftovers of the empire. I've found a few things that might be helpful if they made any sense, but nothing about Earth.”

Joe stepped around Marvelous' chair to stand over poor Doc. “Quit stalling. What'd you find?”

Doc shrunk in his chair and Marvelous felt bad for him. “The words, 'threads to cut threads,' appear a lot, but never in any meaningful context. Anything that's translated into anything I can decode is sparse and patchy, and it would take me some time to pick the phrase out of the untranslated stuff and try to understand the stuff around it. If it's even important.”

“Threads to cut threads, huh?” Marvelous leaned back.

“Sticks in your brain, doesn't it?” Navi offered from her usual perch over Marvelous' shoulder. “Sounds like an omen to me, must be important.”

Gai did a squirmy thing with his mouth and eyebrows that to Marvelous suggested he was either hungry or thinking very hard. He pulled a chair up to Doc's table and sat in it. Backward, hands folded under his chin. “Y'know, those little monsters are kinda made out of threads.”

“So's the big one,” Marvelous said before he could stop himself. He squeezed one hand with the other and his knuckles cracked. It was true, he'd seen it closer than any of them. It was all woven up and sinewy like its cronies, just in a brittle way. Like time and the starving stages of old, horrible hunger had fossilized it.

Joe was beside him again, tugged over by the intimate tether between them that had grown so taut over the past few days. It was enough to let him stand there.

“Threads to cut threads,” Ahim murmured. Her nail made a musical sound on the edge of her cup, tapping.

The silence returned. Outside, frost collected around the rims of the portholes. Marvelous hated the cold. He hadn't always hated silence.

And he missed the silence when the simultaneous trill of five Mobirates chased it away. Everyone but Marvelous jumped at the sudden chorus. He was still and quiet. Doc's stopped ringing first, then Ahim's, then Luka's. Joe's died out last.

Marvelous' kept on ringing.

He lifted his left hands so it was level with his ear. Joe, without further prompt, grasped it.

That made it possible – not easy – to answer.

“Talk.”

A puff of air made the speaker crackle before it became a laugh. “So snippy! Why pick up and then act like you don't want to talk to me?”

Marvelous breathed. “Don't waste my time.”

“That was never my intention. You said, talk, I talked. I thought we were going to have a civil conversation first. No matter.. Mr. Hello Courage and I are waiting on you.”

Joe's hand flexed and buckled under Marvelous' grip. “You-”

The laugh returned. “Ah, you know who I mean! How cute. I wonder what he was doing all muddled up in me in your brain? Kind of weird, don't you think?”

“Leave him out of this.”

“A little too late for that, I'm afraid.. Come out to point 140 or thereabouts, and we'll talk about getting him back to his family in time for New Years. Or whatever. Bring your friends and the blue boy, it really doesn't matter to me.”

Marvelous' jaw worked and he wanted to taste dirt and rot again. “When?”

“Sooner rather than later. I'm impatient, he's old, and I have guests coming. It's all very inconvenient if you take your time. Understand?”

“Sure.”

“I'm glad.” The voice carried a familiar smile. “See you then, Marvey. I'm looking forward to it.”

Marvelous didn't let the line go dead before he flipped his Mobirate shut and let his arm fall. Joe's fingers were cool and compressed in his other hand. Without his saying a single word, the rest of the crew mobilized. He didn't speak again until Doc asked for a destination.

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (๑-﹏-๑) Hmmm, someone got a sinus infection this week so you get this short chapter later than I'd planned. But! A Christmastime update for you to enjoy with your day off/family gathering/Chinese food. Next chapter will be long, so savor this one.
> 
> And don't forget comments are my favorite gift to receive.

“Took you long enough to pick up.”

Basco – yes, he was very comfortable with that name now – sat in sprawled fashion at the console of the S.P.D. ship. Coils and cords of black and muddy red wove in and out of the computer's ports and the gaps between the panels like jungle vegetation overtaking an abandoned building. His Phantoms had done a fine job.

Nicess Gill headed up one of the two remaining factions vying for control of the crumbling Empire, and he clearly spent a lot of time trying to look the part. The billowy cape didn't make him look less reedy and washed out, nor did it do much for the general lopsidedness of his face. There wasn't much regal or intimidating about him, and if Basco were feeling a little more catty he'd ruminate on whether or not he even had any claim to his name.

“Can you blame me for not wanting to open communications with Earth sympathizers at such a crucial time?” Nicess Gill squared his shoulders. “State your business.”

“What a rude way to greet me after you send your cronies to come wake me up,” Basco said. Nicess flinched under all the fabric and Basco smirked. Well, that would save him another call. “Ah, so it was you after all. That little detachment you sent along is long gone, in case you haven't heard. The ship, too. Earth's pretty wild and dangerous for a backwater planet.”

Nicess Gill's face disappeared from the screen when he bent at the waist in a bow that fit him better than the cape. “Great God, forgive me!” He sprang back up with half his cape piled by gravity onto his head. “I understood that your ship had departed, but not the ultimate fate of the mission. However, I must say, in my defense-”

“Enough,” Basco said, raising a hand. One of two Phantoms stationed at his sides filled it with a cup. He hadn't asked, but it was nice! Being called a great god wasn't too shabby, either. Not that he could remember having been called that before. The sticky stuff his mind was building between the parts Marvey gave him was gradually displacing even the faintest recollections of his prior existence. That was frustrating, but it wouldn't be a problem for long. He raised the cup to his lips and smiled behind the rim. “I'm sure you're ever so eager to make it up to me.”

“Of course.” Nicess adjusted his cape and narrowed his eyes. “That is-”

“You don't trust me.” Basco drank.

Nicess straightened up. “Forgive me, but I expected something a bit grander. You must understand-”

“And I assure you I do.” Basco crossed his ankles and leaned on one hand. “You, though, you're ready to step all over the words of a god before they can leave his mouth. Hear me out.”

Nicess shrunk and said nothing. The console hummed.

“That's better,” Basco said. “Now, it's my understanding that you intend to lay the universe at my feet. That is what your crony said, was it not?”

“In exchange-”

Basco waved a hand and took another drink. “Yes, glory to the empire and all that. I've got a few pieces of that universe you offered me I want to collect on before we start talking about resurrecting empires.”

Nicess firmed what he had of a jaw. “Go on.”

“You will come to Earth, first of all, with a little landing party to raise a ruckus and keep this planet's babysitters busy.”

“How big a landing party?”

Basco shrugged. “What can you spare a god?” He watched Nicess fidget. “That's right. Now, you will also bring the information you used to find me.”

He remembered that, almost, or at least that it was important. It was something he needed.

Nicess sighed. It caved his scrawny body in. “Understood. But what about the pirates?”

“It's a shame they broke up your little congregation,” Basco admitted. “And they are here.”

An admirably nasty avarice glinted behind Nicess' eyes. “And their captain, the one Damaras failed to execute?”

“Him too.”

Nicess grinned. “Oh, excellent.”

“Don't get your hopes up.” Basco drained his cup and swiped the sheen off his lips with his tongue. “He's the last item on my list. Alive.”

\---

The wait at point 140 lasted ages. Only hours, really, but-

“Maybe it was a bluff and he won't show his ugly face after all.” At some point, Luka had appeared at Marvelous' side as he looked out over the quarry from his vantage point in the crow's nest. It had snowed, not a thick sparkling blanket of the stuff that almost made the cold bearable, but a crusty dusting that barely obscured the browning scrub and rocky ground.

“If I was him, I'd show up instead of making me chase me.” Marvelous shrugged. “He's in for a beating whether he shows up or not, is what I mean, and it'll be worse if we gotta go get the old man ourselves.”

Luka chuckled and leaned out over the rail. “Damn right,” she said, just as her thin smile faltered. It returned, though not as straight or sure, a moment later. She sighed and tried to turn it into a laugh. “Man. Was this ever a mistake.”

Marvelous leaned back into the mast. “Huh?”

“You could just push me off, right?”

“I could, but what for?” Marvelous watched her back and waited.

Luka shrugged. “But you could, and I'm still here.”

“What're you blabbering about?”

“I mean, it's my fault if you decide to push me over right now.” She turned to face him and leaned back against the railing. “Right?”

Marvelous' face pinched up. “Quit screwing around and get to the point.”

“I already said it.” Luka jutted her chin out at him and pursed her lips.

“You know I'm not gonna push you off.” Marvelous crossed his arms.

“No, I don't. I just figure you probably won't 'cause of stuff you've done before.”

Marvelous scoffed behind a smile he worked hard to make careless. “You're part of the crew, right? Wouldn't do me any good if you couldn't trust me.”

“Yep! And I do trust you. It's still on me if you decide to push me off.”

“What stupid game are you trying to play when we're supposed to be-”

“Fine!” Luka clicked her tongue. “I'll cut to the chase. You push me off now, whose fault is it?”

“Mine,” Marvelous said, forcefully, crossly. Cold rolled down his back like a wave off a rock when his mouth closed behind the word. He felt his eyes widen and his mouth slacken, his whole face becoming open and naked for a moment.

“Yup.” Luka bounced to the hatch and clapped a hand to Marvelous' shoulder. “That's all I wanted to hear. I'm gonna go help Doc now. Holler if you see anything.”

She kicked the hatch open, and before he could haul her back up of think of what he'd say once he had she was down the ladder and gone. He'd have the crow's nest to himself again for the duration of his watch, which to his great satisfaction didn't last long at all. The blare of his Mobriate in his coat pocket pulled him out of his thoughts the instant he found himself alone with them.

“Bad news!” It was Doc. Who else would open a phone call like that?

“That doesn't tell me anything,” Marvelous said. He scanned the horizon.

“Zangyack fleet on the way. Not big, but a nasty surprise. Does that tell you enough to get you down here?”

“Yep!” Marvelous slung himself down onto the ladder and began his descent after letting the phone drop back into his pocket. He could forgive this interruption if it doubled as a distraction, and fights had a way of taking his mind off everything. He sprinted for the bridge, or would have if he didn't collide with Gai on the stairs down. He flew backward and landed on his rear.

“Watch it!” Marvelous snapped, rising. He made a halfhearted attempt to kick Gai back down the stairs.

“I just wanted to make sure you were coming, jeez!” Gai wormed past him. “Besides, I gotta go call GoZyuDrill if I'm gonna fight.”

“How'd you get away with keeping that thing?”

“Well!” Gai put his hands on his hips and fixed Marvelous with a purposeful look that threatened a Super Sentai tangent. “Our Grand Power is combining, right? So we need it, so I gotta have it. And I figure since it's a time traveling mecha, I'm just borrowing it from times when I had it but wasn't using it anyway.” He nodded and grinned as if that explanation would satisfy anyone. “I try not to think about it too much! Otherwise- Hey!”

Marvelous was already bounding down the stairs. If it worked, good. He didn't care how, especially with the first sounds of beam fire striking earth reaching his ears through the hull of the ship. The attack, however small compared to the last, was on. He skidded into place behind the wheel. Communication from here on out would be easier. Yell, be heard, hear yelling in return.

“We're grounded if we transform, so stick to the cannons and let Gai handle whatever comes up on the ground.” A green blast cut through the gray sky, and Marvelous gave the wheel a hard swat to starboard. “How many are we looking at, Doc?”

“Six.”

“Six?” Two came down from the cloud cover and Doc sent a round of cannon fire slamming into the shields of the nearest one before Marvelous even gave the order. “Six is nothing!”

As if to prove his point, the Zangyack ship's shields gave under the next volley.

“Nothing to us, maybe, but big trouble if- Uh, what's that?”

“What's what?” Marvelous squinted against the haze of clouds and thrown dust until a downright weird sight came into rough focus.

The projection, flickering and pale, stretched between two approaching battleships. It was a Zangyack, probably. It was hard to make everything out with the way the image wobbled. He was blue-green for the most part, and clearly favored the blue over the green because he wore a cape to match that color.

“Attention and greetings, pirate scum!” came the warbling address thrown from loudspeakers turned up way too high.

“Who's this clown?” Luka asked over the radio.

“Dunno,” Marvelous said. “He didn't bring enough ships, though.”

“I am Prince Nicess Gill of the first principality of-”

“Just blast him, I don't think he's got anything interesting to say.”

If he did, it was lost to the crackle and buzz of the speakers. The Gigant Horse this half-pint armada was not.

“Are you sure about that?”

Marvelous rested his arms on the wheel. “Well, do _you_ wanna get out the megaphone and ask him to repeat himself?”

“No...”

“Then blow him away already!”

Gai's voice came booming through the speakers, accompanied by crashing sounds. “And fast, I've got problems of my own down here!”

“Yeah?” Marvelous let his hands leave the wheel long enough to call up an off-center view of Gai's position on the ground.

Really, he should have expected it.

It had roughly the same outline as the other skinless, threaded shamblers, just blown up to absurd proportions. It roiled with inky cordage that rippled when it beat on GoZyuJin's chest. Its strikes weren't precise, and it hardly cut an intimidating figure with its stooped posture and heavy head, but it was a more serious distraction than a blowhard with a speech prepared.

Marvelous laid his hands back on the wheel. Did he really think he could ignore this for long? “Blast the clown and the rest of his circus, and everybody get in here.”

The projection died with the ships. No big surprise; Lord Whatshisname couldn't even spring for a decent light show. The Gokaigers assembled and took to the ground, where Gai welcomed them by flinging his opponent straight into GokaiOh's face.

“Sorry, guys!” Gai called. “It's just- Really gross, and I didn't want it hanging on me anymore.”

Up close, it was definitely gross. It had no visible yes to speak of, and the entire surface of it reminded Marvelous of the way the fat and gristle in sausage slid around as it filled a casing. He brought GokaiOh's hand up to grip its face and shove it away.

It collapsed under the mecha's grip.

More accurately, it crumbled. It fell to greasy grains and flailing, smaller bodies, the whole mess raining down and pattering against the metal. Within moments, the whole thing had reduced itself to rubble and squirming things that clambered up GokaiOh's sides and along the ground at its feet.

Marvelous' face fell. “Well, that ain't good.”

A calamity on one end of the radio pulled them out of the brain-blunting weirdness of the moment.

Gunshots, heavy footfalls, and a small tinny voice flitting in and out of the chaos.

“No good, no good!” More clangor, something sparking out. “We've been boarded!”

Marvelous' stomach sank into a deep, cold pit he hadn't realized never closed. He sprang into motion. Joe came up behind him, and Ahim, and Luka, and Doc trailing behind.

Gormin met them in the corridors and went down with hardly a fight. Marvelous could feel his heart in his throat, still.

This shouldn't be happening.

They fought their way to the common room, where Navi had a pair of hapless Gormin running laps trying to grab her. Luka took them both out when they make the circuit past the Gokaigers. Navi winged over to Marvelous and circled his head as he strode into the roughed up room.

“Oh, it was terrible! They came out of nowhere! I was really brave though, right? I brought 'em right to you.”

Marvelous' smile was unsteady but real. He pulled Navi down onto his shoulder and ruffled feathers she didn't have. “Yeah, ya did good.”

Doc sulked to the console and braced his hands on it, head hung to read the screen. “We should probably do a sweep of the ship, right?” he said. “It can't just be two.”

“Right,” Joe said. The nearness of his voice reminded Marvelous of how close he'd stuck to him this whole time. It stung a little when he pivoted on one heel to start down the steps toward the engine room and the gangway.

He was gone around the corner for an instant before he returned, flung off his feet by a powerful blow that left him sprawled and still on the floor.

Sprawled and bloody at the foot of those steps.

And the room that had been their sanctuary smelling of gunfire.

The world around Marvelous slowed.

The thing that wore Basco's face strode around the corner, tapping the barrel of a gun at his hip.

He trained his eyes – and the barrel of the gun – on Marvelous.

“Honey, I'm home.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, we are back in serious territory.


	14. Chapter 14

“Now, we can do this all orderly-like, or we can improvise and see how many of you are up for the whole dying for Marvey's honor thing,” Basco said, sweeping the line of his shot from one pirate to the next.

Marvelous hardly heard him. He only registered the words, which wasn't exactly the same as truly hearing someone. He was watching Joe stir – thank God – on the floor behind Basco. He was hearing the mechanical clicks and whirrs of Navi flapping by his head.

He took a breath and set his face. “Where's the old man?”

“Oh, we'll go see him soon enough,” Basco said. “I figure I'll take you as my trade and the little dummy to take him back here for you. With all your toys left behind, of course.”

Marvelous scoffed and tried to feel it. “Naturally.” Navi drifted away from him and toward Joe, and Basco tracked her with his eyes for a moment. She circled Joe's head as he rose. Marvelous made a point of not watching too closely. “Gai, you up for accompanying the captain for negotiations?”

Gai was already beside him, all wound up and ready to spring and negotiate with his fists. “Guess so.” Marvelous heard him swallow. “But-”

“Oh, hush!” Basco gave a high, squawking, charmless laugh. “I only want him for so long. What sick things are you imagining, hm? This is purely practical, business only.”

Now Luka was beside him. “Keep making jokes like that, see what happens.”

Marvelous held out an arm at his side to keep her at bay. “Relax.”

“Look-”

“Trust me.”

Luka stepped back, and at that same moment Joe lurched forward. Marvelous took in his form in the second it took him to rise. No bloom of red across his chest or anywhere else. Good.

Joe's boots struck the steps, and Basco whipped around to face him. Marvelous went cold.

“Oh, you're gonna be a problem!”

“Joe, stop!”

Too late. Joe had begun the charge before the words even formed in Marvelous' throat, and by the time they left his mouth Basco had fired his retaliatory shot.

Charging up the steps, incensed, foolish. A shot to stop him, but not careless this time because Joe was a real threat the way Marvelous hadn't been. Time slowed again. Powder and ozone stung Marvelous' lungs.

The sounds of the moment jumbled over one another. The report of the shot, a gasp echoed five times, a sharp 'pang!' and a wail of shock and pain.

But not Joe's

Basco's head snapped back and a spout of that earth-smelling red stuff jetted out to spatter on the deck. He buckled at the waist and clasped his free hand to his face, snarling.

Navi spun in mid-air, suspended inches from Joe's face. Her right wing had gone cockeyed. Joe reached out to grab her.

“All right, then!” Basco's words came out ragged, and when he turned to face the others again a red cascade had made its way down his arm to disappear into his sleeve. The room stank of old rotten wood. His left eye was undeniably gone. “That's fine. No matter. If you want to make this difficult, that's fine, but you should understand the odds first. This ship's infested right now, and I don't need any of you like I need Marvey.”

Countless sets of feet tromped up the halls from the gangway. Marvelous knew that sound. The other pirates moved to crowd around him without saying a word.

“I could cripple this tub and take the rest of you down with it, or you could play along and we all go away. And I send Marvey and the old boy back with the cabin boy when I'm through with him. Follow me?”

“Accepted,” Marvelous said. He jabbed Gai with his elbow. “Give your key to Doc.”

Joe met his eyes and scowled. “Marvelous.”

“Trust me.”

“Yes, it's all very touching.” Basco waved a hand and a swarm of Gormin and Phantoms came scattering and shambling around the corner to surround Joe. “Don't worry, this isn't goodbye forever. Fork your toys over to fluffy over there, Marvey, I'm getting impatient again.”

Gai kept very close to Doc when he handed off his Cellular and key. He looked between Doc and Basco, his posture uncharacteristically deflated. “Let him keep his phone.”

Basco snorted. “And why should I do that?”

“To call the ship so we can leave when- When you're through.” Gai straightened up and held his hands up to illustrate that he'd made the hand-off with Doc. “Because you're gonna let us leave, right?”

“I'll call it.” Basco tapped his gun at his hip.

Marvelous narrowed his eyes and watched Gai. His jaw ached from biting down.

“It's a gesture of good faith,” Gai said, and Doc nodded. “If you let him keep it, it means you're willing to let us go 'cause he can call the Galleon himself.”

Basco hummed and scanned the room. He clicked his tongue. “Fine. Take the key off him and show me all six together. I won't have any more key swapping shenanigans.”

“Right.” Gai flitted over to Marvelous and rummaged in the pockets of his coat for his key. The others gathered and held out their own keys. “Satisfied?”

“Marginally.” Basco swiped the congealing blood-stuff off his face. His left eyes stayed shut behind the mess. “I suppose compromise is inevitable. Come along, then, Marvey. You too, cabin boy.”

Marvelous moved first, walking right past Basco and down the steps. The troops parted for him and moved to flank him as he made his way down the hall. He didn't dare turn around, because he could feel Joe's eyes on his back still. And Luka's, too. And the others, but Joe's and Luka's most powerfully.

“Don't try anything too flashy, Marvey,” Basco said, having appeared at his side to radiate smugness. “I'm doing you a favor not taking Blue Boy along.”

Marvelous said nothing. Gai managed to keep his trap shut, too, which Marvelous appreciated.

\---

The blare of horns – not of one, but of a dozen – greeted them. The little scout ship Basco and his cronies had herded them onto hovered briefly over the scene, the sound cutting through the hum of the engine.

Beam fire had carves a burning arc out of the city while they twiddled their thumbs elsewhere. It had all been a ruse, a diversion. And Marvelous couldn't help but wonder if Basco chose 140 because it was all Marvelous' mind provided him, or because he knew that of all the points Marvelous had stored in his brain it held the most significance.

Hadn't he changed?

When had he become, again, someone who blithely took a baited hook?

“This is terrible,” Gai murmured from his self-appointed position as guard dog at Marvelous' side. He and the Phantoms flanking them both provided a good buffer of space between Marvelous and Basco, so he let himself appreciate the gesture rather than feel annoyed.

“No kidding.”

Banners in purple and red ringed the scorched area the ships had cut out of the city. At the far end, dead center, a towering building with tall steps leading to its doors stood untouched save for the banners draped over its front. This was an intentional, if improvised, ceremonial staging area.

How many people had died for presentation's sake?

The scout ship shuddered as it skidded into a rough landing among the rubble. Marvelous made his face an impassive mask as the Phantoms herded them both down the gangplank and onto the ground. The dry winter air outside stung all the pipes in his head with acrid smoke. The banners snapped in a stiff wind. The Gormin stationed at the foot of the steps played on. Marvelous could just make out the forms of Earthlings creeping along the edges of the scorched area to watch. There'd be a whole lot of them soon enough, he had no doubt.

“Come along, quit dawdling,” Basco said, ghosting up behind them. For a guy missing an eye, he sounded pretty chipper. “March, march. I don't have all day.”

The barrel of a gun jabbed Marvelous' back. He curled his lip up and started to move. “Where's the old man?”

“Patience, patience,” Basco said. He gave Gai a hard shove forward and Marvelous caught him by the arm before he could stumble or spin around to return the favor. “It won't take long, I promise, and then we can make our little exchange.”

So they marched. The remains of shattered windows crackled under their feet.

The doors burst open when they neared the foot of the steps. The horns stopped and their players swiveled to salute Nicess Gil as he strode into the sunlight.

“Well! It seems our little gambit kept your interest just long enough, Captain Marvelous.” He sauntered to the edge of the very top step and looked down with his hands on his hips. “My but you're shorter in person.”

“Could say the same to you,” Marvelous said. It was true; the guy didn't exactly cut an imposing figure even compared to the cluster of Gormin at his back. He had the look of someone underfed, and only on starches. The sculpted armor he had on under that cape probably did double duty hiding a paunch.

“Nobody asked you!” Nicess Gil stood straight up and pushed out his chest. The way he squawked the words brought a smile to Marvelous' face, just for a second. “Phantoms, bring him.”

The things grabbed his arms and tugged him toward the stairs. He resisted. “Where's Gavan?”

Basco shoved Gai aside and buried a hand on Marvelous' hair. He ruffled it so hard it snagged on his rings and yanked. Marvelous grimaced. “He's a needy one, you see?” Basco said. “Let him have his way for a moment and we can get on with this.”

Nicess Gil scoffed. “Very well.”

Those tall doors opened again, slowly, and a pair of Sgormin hauled Gavan out into view. He'd clearly taken a beating before they got the cuffs on him, but it hadn't taken the fire out of his eyes. Eyes that he kept focused firmly on Marvelous once he was able. Marvelous met his gaze and tried to smirk.

“Heya. Got yourself in some trouble?”

Gavan raised one corner of his mouth, the corner with the brown-red smear on it. “You could say that.”

A hard tug at the roots of Marvelous' hair started him up the steps, dragged behind Basco. He didn't yelp, but Gai did. Marvelous swatted him away when he grabbed at his hand.

“Now then,” Basco said. “Shall we do a simultaneous trade, Marvey for the geezer?”

“Wait!” Gai was still at their heels, kicking at the Phantoms that tried to pull him back down the steps. “Hey! Hang on!”

Basco turned the most accusatory glance one can give with half the average number of eyes on Gai. “What?”

“I need this!” Gai snatched at Marvelous' coat, unloaded four or five candy wrappers, and finally pulled out his Mobirate. Then he skittered back down to the foot of the stairs. “Can't have you taking it before I can call.”

Basco sighed and flung Marvelous up the final three steps, where he sprawled at Nicess Gil's feet. “Whatever. Toss the geezer down and don't take the cuffs off him. They can figure that out once we're done here.”

The Sgormin did just that, and Marvelous moved to grab his tumbling body an instant too late. Gai gathered him up instead. Marvelous turned away from them.

“Read from the book,” Basco said, striding up to stand before the doors. “And you, Marvey, come here.”

Nicess produced a battered little volume with thick pages and a warped cover from the belt of pouches around his hips and thumbed to a place somewhere in the middle. He then began to mumble what might as well have been gibberish. The vowel sounds rolled on and on forever, unfurling as white mist in the cold air.

The words didn't compel Marvelous, but he moved anyway. His hands itched for a gun when he came within grabbing distance of Basco.

The thing his mind had made into Basco.

He had to keep reminding himself of that.

“What're you gonna do, kill me for your sacrifice?” Marvelous asked through a smirk.

Basco chortled. “Nothing quite so simple. Remember, I need you, even if you're a worse power source than you've been. I figure I might as well just take what's left and make a signal fire.”

“What?”

The words wrapped around them. The horns blared again. Marvelous' heart beat hard.

“What?”

“Just sit still, hm?” Basco reached for him. The fake-soft pads of his fingers came to rest on his neck, thumb on the pulse, grasping softly.

Why didn't he pull away?

The dried blood-stuff around Basco's mouth crackled when he smiled. “I won't even kiss you.”

He didn't. He didn't even come closer than the length of his arm, and for a moment Marvelous was grateful.

Basco wouldn't kiss him.

His touch couldn't kill him.

But it could take him back, just the way it had tried to do that first time in the makeshift cathedral carved into the rock of that outlying planet. It could take him back by years, it could blast away layers he'd only recently allowed to start scaling away. It could strip him.

It could take him back to where the dreams took him.

_'No quarry for thieves!'_

_'I didn't even take anything yet!'_

_'Yeah, yet!'_

_Pushing back against hands that pushed him backward._

_The galley smelled like bread that wouldn't be ready for another day. It was all goop in big buckets. Called a sponge or something._

_'You're being weird.'_

_There wasn't any laughter in his voice anymore. The edge of the counter stopped him from backing away._

_And Basco's body pinned him in place._

_It wasn't the first time he was 'weird.' It wouldn't be the last. It was only the first time he didn't stop when it stopped being funny._

_'Maybe I can be bribed out of punishing you, hm?'_

_Laughing, balling fists, trying to make it funny again. 'Maybe you can get beat out of it.'_

_A smile, sharp but sweet. Cutting and kind. 'Nah.'_

_Basco's fingers finding his wrists, gripping, pulling down to stay arms Marvelous couldn't bring himself to raise._

_And Basco's mouth on his. And a weird gurgle-chirp sound in his throat._

_A flash of anger and indignity he didn't understand._

_He wanted this, right? Or he had, once._

_Wasn't seeing that face and wanting this instantly the whole reason Basco was on this ship?_

_Why this hurt, then?_

_Why did he tear a hand away to strike Basco across the jaw and bolt from the galley?_

_Why did that terrible sound keep trying to rise up his throat and out of his eyes when he made a break for the crow's nest?_

_Why throw the bolt to lock the hatch?_

_It was only Basco being weird._

_It was only something he thought about anyway._

_If it was only that, why did three raps on the underside of the hatch make him jump?_

_'Marvelous.'_

_AkaRed._

_'Yeah?' It was so easy to swallow the sound now._

_'Did something happen?'_

_It was so easy to laugh, too._

_'We had a fight. He's a moron. Forget it.'_

_If it was anything more than that, why was it so easy to say that?_

Marvelous struggled. He tried to pull himself back out, to swim for the surface. His face contorted with the effort, or he imagined it did. In the brief flashes he managed to glimpse of the world outside his head, a pillar of color and light had sprung up around them, twisting, swirling, a vibrant spout with them in the eye.

And it forced him back down, down, down.

_'Oh, Marvey, what's with the face? I didn't scare you, did I?'_

_Basco standing over him. They were drunk now, Basco far less so for being bigger and, at least when it came to debauching, a lot less stupid. And they debauched whenever AkaRed was away._

_Because it was fun, and it wasn't something AkaRed let Marvelous get away with. But Basco always did. They'd carouse and rough house and try to out-drink each other. Or Marvelous would try to out-drink Basco. That always felt so important back then._

_And sometimes they'd dance. It was the stupid, slow kind of dancing Basco insisted every man with an adventurous heart needed to know because it made you charming. It was stupid, but it made Marvelous' pulse flutter strangely in the backs of his hands when Basco held and positioned them. And when he let Marvelous guide him around even though he was taller and, even drunk, knew better what to do._

_At least it used to be like that. And it always was, still, whenever it first started. When his rum-softened brain got giddy at the attention and took its time remembering the weirdness._

_This time, it was different._

_He didn't remember how Basco got him up against the bulkhead, but he remembered how he tried to pin him in place with his hips and how he was ready of it this time. He remembered remembering the other times. He turned hard to jerk away and brought his right hand up to strike so hard his arm hurt all the way up to the elbow._

_But drunks have poor balance. He couldn't stay up for the follow through, wound up crashing on the deck. And Basco wasn't fazed. The bastard looked amused, the reddened side of his face quirked up in a crooked smile._

_Cutting and kind._

_Marvelous couldn't find his legs in time to evade. He scrambled backward, gaze locked on Basco's face._

_When did he get so good at taking a punch?_

_'You're really scared of me right now, aren't you?' A laugh, eyes downcast in a play at bashfulness. 'My, my.'_

_Marvelous couldn't make his body kick and scramble fast enough to get away before Basco dropped down to kneel over him, face to smirking face._

_'Marvey.' Soft fingers on his wrists, holding. His aching hand the only part of him that accepted his brain's command to move. Flexing, curling and uncurling, deciding over and over whether or not to fight and not quite struggling out from under the booze and the question of whether or not he had any reason to be scared._

_Or if he was scared at all._

_Because what was the point of being scared if he started this?_

_If he was scared, how had it come so far?_

_Every time they had some time to themselves, a little further. Marvelous didn't always hit him, after all. It wasn't all pushing and penning in. Sometimes they'd be sitting side by side and fumble through something or other. That left him smiling, sometimes._

_The back of his head hit the deck._

_Since when had Basco been so strong?_

_When did he get so heavy?_

_Why did he laugh when Marvelous, his neck all red and his body curiously burning, finally managed to wriggle free?_

Marvelous surfaced again and took a big breath that burned his throat with cold and soot. The light pillar evaporated, and in its absence Marvelous saw mismatched doubles of the same man. The false friend with one eye and the privateer, the first nearer to him than the second and stroking his neck with his thumb. The second smirking, arms folded, eyebrows held up in incredulity.

Marvelous doubted Gai could see the new double.

He hadn't been able to see Yuuki Gai, either.

The privateer stepped forward, into the monster's back. With a flicker, one was gone and both were one. The light torrent kicked up again. It closed around them, roaring, crashing. Voices rang out outside the flashing walls, but Marvelous couldn't make out the words. He'd found the will to struggle free of Basco's grip now, just in time to see the flesh around his eye seal itself shut. To see the blood dry and flake away, whisked off like ruddy snow by the tearing winds. To see the flesh swirl and mingle together, phase in and out of solidity, and become an eye again.

An eye that smiled with its identical brother, both set over a smiling mouth. A kind, cutting mouth.

“Now, that's much better.” Basco shoved Marvelous back.

The bitterly familiar tunic disappeared, green pouring off like water and red racing in to replace it. Red that wrapped him up. Red and gold, in the style of the monster he always was.

But he kept the face. Maybe because he liked it better, maybe because Marvelous hated it worse.

The droning dirge words had died. The whirls of light sputtered to skidding sparkles on the ground and left the world around Marvelous quiet and still. Until Basco took a step toward him.

“ _Zyuranger!”_

A metallic crash called Marvelous to whip his head sideways just in time to see Dragon Ranger charging up the steps and, a moment later, free from the cuffs, Gavan.

“Electroplate!”

Marvelous didn't have time to process the turn, not with Basco bearing down on him and the assembled small fry monsters swarming up and over the steps. Nicess Gil hooted commands to apprehend them, and in the next moment Marvelous was grabbing a Gormin's hand off his shoulder and slinging the poor sucker straight into Basco.

Basco flung it straight down the stairs and turned on Marvelous with a long blade drawn from a scabbard at his side. It flashed red when he swung it through the air. Marvelous ducked under a hard swing and twisted his body to jam the toe of his boot in Basco's side. He let the motion fling him out of range.

Gavan came to a stop at the head of the stairs and grabbed Marvelous by the arm just as Basco charged him again.

“Barrier!”

A rippling panel of light sprung into place before them both. Basco's sword crashed against it, red sparks spraying everywhere before the barrier flashed away. The resistance sent him staggering back into the arc of Gai's swing with that little tweety sword thing Marvelous could never remember the name of.

It cut a stripe straight down Basco's back, and he yowled like an animal with a snapped leg. The shock didn't last before purpose and rage filled his face again and he whirled on Gai.

“Gai, watch it!” He tore his arm free from Gavan's grip and made a dash for Basco's back.

Too late.

A strike with that sword across his chest sent him hurtling, transformation flickering away, through those parted wooden doors and into the dark beyond them. For a second too long, Marvelous forgot Basco and Nicess Gil and their cronies and followed his impulse to dive after Gai.

He left the winter sun behind, and most of the ruckus with it.

Gai was sprawled on the rug in the middle of a big, dark room that smelled sweet and strange. Marvelous dropped down beside him and turned him over. His eyes fluttered open and shut. Blood ran from the center of his forehead in a little stream between his eyebrows.

Nicess Gil's squawking bellows broke up the silence.

“All right! Open fire!”

Marvelous flinched, turned, and started to rise again just as beam fire from the sky brought the building down around them.

\---

“Gai. Hey. Hey! Try and stay awake, huh?”

Gai whined and squirmed, eyes screwed shut. His head hurt pretty bad and the light swats to his face didn't help at all.

“I'm awake, I'm awake!” he said, flailing his hands futilely in front of his face. “I'm-”

Everything before the blackout came flooding back and his eyes snapped open. Marvelous' face came into wiggly focus above him.

“There ya go.” Marvelous sat back. A row of little lights – candles, Gai had to remind himself – set along a long wooden bench behind him soaked a tight circle of the rubble-strewn area around them in warm light. The place had crumpled in just right, it appeared, to spare them from the weight of the collapsing roof.

Gai sat up and blinked at Marvelous and his army of little candles and the wreckage around them. Marble and concrete chunks intermingled on the floor. Lots of splintered polished wood.

Right. This was a church, wasn't it? He hadn't been in a wedding recently enough for the information to float quickly to the top of his rattled mind. He touched his forehead and grimaced.

“You okay?” Gai asked before Marvelous could ask him the same.

Marvelous grunted. “Been better. What about you?”

Gai gave a big smile. “My head hurts, but that's okay.”

“You keep getting hit in the head and you're gonna wind up even goofier than you already are.” Marvelous folded his arms over his chest, and Gai noticed the absence of his coat. He realized it had become his pillow.

“I don't mind,” Gai said, sweeping the coat up and scooting over on his knees to hand it to Marvelous. “Where's Gavan-san?”

“Taking care of the half pint's army with some Earth backup, as far as I last heard,” Marvelous said. “The others are on the way in the Galleon as of ten minutes ago.”

Gai heaved a big sigh of relief and leaned back against the pew. Moving around too much made him feel all wobbly, still. “That's good.”

Marvelous stretched his legs out and crossed one over the other. “Speaking of backup, how'd you manage that back there?”

“Ah. That.” Gai fidgeted. Should he admit he wasn't even sure it would work? “Well, you know, Burai-san isn't alive anymore so he's not using it anyway, so I figured if I tried and wanted it hard enough I could borrow it.”

“Burai's Dragon Ranger?”

Gai groan-sighed. “Yes! Anyway-”

“Why him, though? There's like three other dead guys.”

Gai flinched and shimmied back against the pew to better support himself and look upstanding and not at all like a little kid caught doing something stupid. “Uh. Well.”

“Don't tell me it's 'cause he's green.”

“No!” Gai pinked and looked at a shattered, shadowed window instead of at Marvelous. “I guess he was just on my mind because it was you in trouble, that's all.”

A beat passed. The beams overhead creaked.

“I don't get it,” Marvelous said.

Gai picked at one of the tassels on his scarf and pursed his lips. It wasn't really a dumb thing to think, was it? There shouldn't be anything wrong with just saying it.

“Burai-san was Geki – Zyuranger's leader's – older brother when he was alive. Like Hyuuga-san and Ryouma-san.” He waited for Marvelous to interrupt. “Anyway. Partnerships like that were really important to me when I was little because I moved all the time and it was only me and my parents. And then just me and my mom. I made a lot of friends wherever I moved, eventually, but I never had a friend I could have around all the time like a brother or a sister. And Marvelous-san feels a lot like what I always thought that'd feel like. So.”

Why was his face as hot as it had been when he leaned in to kiss Don? The thought of kissing Marvelous was gross!

“Good!” Marvelous laughed and it sounded real and warm, if tired. He clapped a hand on Gai's shoulder. “Brothers, huh? Never figured I'd have family from Earth.”

Gai's smile returned and warmed his eyes. It was just the head wound talking, probably. “Marvelous-san.”

“I'm not messing with you, don't worry.” Marvelous took his hand back and stood to stretch. “I never had anybody like that either.”

“Oh, yeah,” Gai murmured. He used the back of the pew to steady himself and stand. “You grew up alone, huh?”

“Mostly,” Marvelous said. He paced around the perimeter of the little sanctuary the building's collapse had allowed them. He paused behind the rubble-strewn altar and shoved aside a curtain that concealed a door knocked askew. “Lived with my mama for a while, then it was just me.”

Gai followed, finding his footing as he went. “How long's a while?” he asked, and immediately regretted it.

“Nine or ten years,” Marvelous said. He slipped through the doorway and onto the stairs beyond. “Come on, there's a view and I want the others to see us easy.”

“You're sure it's safe?” Gai asked, extending a foot to touch the toe of his sneaker to the first step.

Marvelous gave a rattling sigh. “You just ambushed Zangyack's new god and you're worried about the stairs?”

“Ah.” Gai stepped onto the stair behind Marvelous. “I guess that is silly. You were all alone since you were ten?”

Marvelous' shoulders moved in the dark. Gai followed him up. “For the most part, I guess. Worked on plenty ships, been on plenty crews.”

“That's not the same.” Gai used the wall as a guide. The stairwell had no windows, and it was probably dark out besides.

“Guess not.” Marvelous disappeared around a bend. It wasn't a spiral staircase, but the multiple landings told Gai they weren't just going to the second floor balcony or something. “Explains a lot.”

“Like what?” Gai asked. He swept a little pile of debris aside and listened to it clatter down to the landing below.

Marvelous hummed to himself. “Hard to say. But nobody on those ships treated me like more than a kid to order around. AkaRed took me on and treated me like somebody who needed looking after.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“Everything if you're a dumb brat who's never had a man telling you what to do for your own good.” A crisp draft rolled down the stairs between Marvelous' words. “Everybody before that, they just told me to do stuff to get the work done. And he'd act all concerned. Made me feel like he thought I was stupid sometimes.”

“But he didn't!” Gai said, as if he knew because he was sure that he was.

“Nah, not any more stupid than I already was,” Marvelous said. He shoved open a door at the head of the final set of stairs and let the cold air and the last of the day's light inside. “But it felt that way sometimes, so I was a big pain the neck for him.”

They stepped out onto the platform that wrapped around the church's tower and agreed, without either speaking the intent, to lean on the railing and look out at the city. The scarred, quiet city.

Marvelous spoke again before Gai could.

“Made it easier for that bastard to sneak aboard.”

Gai bristled up like an offended puppy. “That's not true!”

“It is.” Marvelous sounded tired. “As much as I hate him now, I was drawn to him then. He told me stuff I wanted to hear. The day I met him, I felt like I was getting a taste of what it's like to be grown up. Even when he talked down to me he'd act like he was joking around.”

“Ah.” Gai leaned on the railing and fidgeted like it might help him decide whether or not he should say the first thing his brain provided. Or anything at all. Then he stole a look at Marvelous face to get a feel for the air around the situation and found it flack and unguarded. “But Basco turned out to be one of those bad grown ups.”

Marvelous' shoulders fell and the skin around his eyes softened. He tipped his face up into the fading light. “Yeah.”

Gai flinched as if pricked. “Sorry.” Warmth bled out of his skin and into the wind.

“Don't bother being sorry.”

“But I am!” Gai stamped one foot and tried to put on a face that conveyed anything but wounded anger. It just made his jaw and the strings in his neck hurt. “I'm sad for you. And I'm sorry because I know there's nothing I can do about it now and I want to so bad it hurts. I can do all kinds of cool stuff by just throwing myself at it hard enough, and every time before now when I thought maybe-possibly that's what happened I'd get sick because even with all that power there's nothing I could do, not ever.”

“Gai.” Marvelous turned a rare gentle look on him.

Gai took a short, wet breath and made his mouth very small. Now he was practically crying. Good. Fine. “I know it's stupid. Like with the treasure. It's stupid to want to just fix things, but I want to. I love you – I mean, not like Joe-san loves you, but...” He surveyed Marvelous' face and sniffed again. “I wanna make it better, and I can't, and I'm sorry.”

“You're doing fine.”

“Eh?”

Marvelous leaned in and put a hand on Gai's shoulder. The rims of his eyes were pink. “Knock on the head make it hard to process words? I said you're doing fine. Anyway, ship's on the way. Shouldn't be long now. Try and relax a little.”

Gai sniffed again. “Sure...”

\---

He should have figured Gavan would be aboard, but he couldn't have expected him to be waiting in the gangway for them. Alone.

“Looks like you made it out okay,” Marvelous said, making his way for the corridor up to the living quarters. Gavan intercepted him. “What?”

“I see you made it out all right, too,” Gavan said, nodding.

Marvelous resisted the urge to just squeeze around him. “Yeah.”

Gavan pulled him into a sudden, firm hug and Marvelous, remembering Gai was right behind them, froze with a scowl on his face. “I'm so relieved. I can't tell you how much.”

“And you don't have to.” Marvelous squirmed, his face all crooked. “More to the point, you're squashing me.”

“Sorry.” Gavan patted his back and held him at arm's length by his shoulders. The softened look to his face made Marvelous just standing there. “Well. The others are hard at work on the bridge, and I'm on my way down to rendezvous with some officers I believe you've met before. Maintain communications.”

“Will do.” Marvelous ducked out of Gavan's grasp and patted his shoulder as he left the gangway. “Tell the dog I said hi if he's around.”

“Roger.”

Marvelous didn't turn to see if Gavan did his little salute as he left, but he gave one of his own just as the patter of Gai's feet started after him.

\---

“I hope you appreciate the effort I went to getting this thing,” Luka said, maybe for the third time since Gai and Marvelous fell onto the sofa to decompress while Don scanned that weird book with the too-thick pages into the ship's computer.

Don hadn't looked at him since they got back, but he was also super busy so Gai tried not to think about that. He was trying not to think about a lot of stuff at the moment.

“I am, I am, you don't have to keep saying it.” A brittle page snapped free in Don's hand and he sighed. “It's a shame they both got away, though.”

Luka pursed her lips and whipped something from the table – it moved too fast for Gai to tell what – straight at the back of Don's head. “If you wanted his head on a platter, you shoulda asked! I'd make sure you got it!”

Don's head bobbled. He picked the something off the console. “I wasn't talking about you not doing it. And please don't throw grapes at me.”

“Enough!” Marvelous rearranged himself to take up more room on the couch, leaving Gai to scrabble onto the arm and perch. “Get on with it. What's that book of mystical gibberish good for?”

“That's the thing, it's not gibberish!” Don declared. He held up a page that, to Gai, meant absolutely nothing. Except that it was important to Don, which made it important automatically. “It's a transliteration into a common alphabet, and there's a glossary, and-”

Don trailed off when he noticed all but one pair of eyes in the room glazing over.

“It's got a dictionary I'm feeding into the computer with the rest of the stuff I've been working on.”

“Awesome!” Gai hopped in his seat and grinned. Don still didn't look at him, but that was fine! Totally fine.

“It's definitely helpful,” Don said. He nodded to the screen. “It's already working out some possible translations for us.”

Joe arranged himself on the opposite arm rest, by Marvelous. “Do any of those possible translations have anything to do with beating this thing?”

“That's been the focus of my research so far, so I'm hoping so.” Don watched the readouts flicker across the screen, scanned images of the crumbly pages appearing, digitizing, and disappearing again with only raw text left behind. Gai watched with him. “As for what happened back there-”

“I know,” Marvelous said. Gai didn't. “We're not dealing with a knockoff anymore.”

Gai's eyes widened to emcompass half his face. “Eh?”

Don sighed and let Navi come over to roost on him and 'pat' his head with her wing. “That's what I was afraid of,” he said. “There's this entire passage about, 'to make whole the tapestry,' and-”

“Great.” Joe swung his arms over the arm of the couch and strode across the room to stand by Doc. Gai immediately felt bad for not just doing that himself. “So I guess we've got his real face to deal with on top of whatever else that thing can do.”

“Looks like it,” Don murmured.

Marvelous sat up straight and crossed his arms. “Fine. Don't mind killing him again anyways.”

“I don't know if it will be that simple,” Don said. He scrolled through a solid wall of unbroken lettering in an alphabet Gai didn't recognize. The screen flashed red for a moment, the crew's emblem rotating in the center as the program jogged to catch up to Don's commands. Then a recognizable, if cryptic phrase appeared.

“To arrest the storm of terror, one and all must embrace with courage the course laid out by the winds.”

Don read the words, softly. He was holding Navi, whose head swiveled and bobbled curiously.

“I coulda told you something that makes more sense!” Navi chirped. Her sharp outcry prodded a hole in the air and let the tension flow out. Most of it, anyway.

Ahim set her teacup down and folded her hands on the table. “I must say, it is rather abstract.”

“Cups and wells and threads and storms and the wind,” Luka mumbled. She reclined in her seat with her feet resting on an adjacent chair. “I'm getting real sick of all these metaphors.”

“I can't help it if it's not a very literal language,” Don said. He released Navi and she went to perch near Marvelous. “You guys can feel free to go eat dinner, since it's just warming in the oven. I'll keep working on this.”

Gai sat up so fast he almost headbutted Marvelous, who was making tracks for the kitchen just as swiftly. “You're sure about that, Don-san?”

“I don't exactly have a choice.”

Still not looking at him.

\---

“Gai.”

Gai jumped and turned to see Joe watching him from the top of the stairs down to the cabins. He hadn't eaten – and he'd tried, because it smelled really good! - so he was extra jumpy and rattled anyway. But Joe could be alarming under any circumstances if you didn't expect him.

“Oh. Hey, Joe-san.”

Joe started his descent and spoke just loudly enough to carry his voice over his steps. “You were there. How is he?”

Gai wormed around in his sneakers. “Not great.” Why lie? “You should-”

“I'm on my way.” Joe ducked around him. “But you go be with Doc. He's not gonna come talk to you on his own and he's been nothing but annoying since you left.”

Gai felt weird and chilly and hollow, like Joe had kicked a hole straight through him. “You're sure? He won't even look at me.”

Joe made a sound that sat somewhere between sighing and gargling. He turned hard eyes over his shoulder. “Don't make me have a flip-flopped version of this same conversation in this same hallway. Get going.”

“Aye aye,” Gai said, the words coming out sharp and startled. He stood at attention and started sweating immediately. “You, uh, you go first. You've got further to walk.”

“That makes no sense, but whatever.”

Joe started down the hall again and Gai walked like a wind-up toy to Don's door.

He knocked three times, waited, and knocked again.

“Don-san?”

Silence.

Waiting, considering. Remembering the wind screaming around him and Don tumbling down almost too fast to catch.

“Don?”

A small sound, curious, answered. Or Gai pretended that it answered.

“I'm gonna open the door, so don't be naked, okay?”

He flung the door open and ducked inside, slamming it with the weight of his body once he was safely inside. Enthusiasm or nothing.

Enthusiasm that wavered when Don jumped up from his desk chair. His hands made a sharp crack against his red, wet face when he moved to hide it. He didn't say a word, but his shaking shoulders spoke volumes more than the prophecies and omens he'd spent the evening deciphering.

“I'm sorry!” Gai squawked, not knowing what for besides everything. He took the few steps that separated them and grabbed Don by the shoulders. “I didn't- I mean. Don, are you okay?”

Don shook his head behind tight fingers and hiccuped. It took him a moment to actually speak. “I thought-” He sniffed and his shoulders jerked under Gai's hands. “I thought, it's just my luck, you know. Trying to make you more than a crewmate, I'd lose you like I lost everybody else before.”

The back of Gai's neck prickled. Don, more than any of them, kept the details of his life before joining the crew to himself. Gai slid his hands off Don's shoulders to clasp his hands and lift them from his face. “You didn't lose me. See?”

“Don't,” Don said, pulling at Gai's hands to get his own back. “It's not fair that you have to see me like this.”

Gai swallowed. “I don't get it,” he said, holding Don's hands down by his sides until he stopped squirming. He let his hands unclasp and rise, then, one cupping the curve of Don's jaw so his fingertips could thread through the hair behind his ear. His face was red and wet and hot to the touch. Gai was instantly and powerfully determined to fix that. He kissed Don's cheeks and circled his hand around to pull him closer.

Don whimpered and a fresh stream of salt rolled down. Gai swept it away with his lips.

“I don't see anything wrong with your face right now.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohhh myyy goodddd
> 
> Happy New Year.
> 
> This was long.
> 
> And rich in incident.
> 
> Please comments if you're having fun.
> 
> I can't English anymore.
> 
> Porn next time, it's unavoidable. 
> 
> Get hype.
> 
> This was emotionally draining.
> 
> Good night and good luck.
> 
> //evaporates


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, look, pornography. Astounding, only two dang weeks late! Explanations and sappy declarations of my love for you guys later. I'm just happy this is finally done. Onward, to dickings!

Don's mouth tasted sweet. And minty, probably because he'd just brushed his teeth. And vaguely salty on account of the tears. But the predominant note was a sweet one, and maybe that had something to do with the butterflies in Gai's stomach fluttering around and confusing his tongue. Whatever. It was nice.

Even if he hadn't meant for his lips to land there. Even if he couldn't have accounted for how the way-too-cute-to-believe noise Don made when he did it would make him smile in this totally inappropriate moment. He wanted to feel terrible. Don was clearly distressed, and with good reason, and here he was-

“Gai.”

The word rushed past his left ear as a hot, wet breath. The knot of tension in Gai's chest seized, froze, and uncoiled. Warmth spilled and poured out from where it had been, running down between his ribs.

“Y-yeah?” Of course he couldn't think of anything cool to say. Of course. But then, what would anyone say?

“Lock the door.” Don wasn't... quite smiling. He wore a wobbly, almost queasy expression that turned his red eyes up and made his mouth ripple.

It took Gai a second to construct a response.

“Eh? Eh?”

“Please.”

Gai scrambled backward. And forgot, for a full five seconds, exactly how the doors in this ship he'd called home for over a year locked. Every time his fingers fumbled with the mechanism, a small voice tucked in the back of his brain asked, “Is this it? Is this happening?”

And by the time he had the door secured, the soft asking had become a frantic chant.

Don was smiling, nervously, earnestly. _Something_ was definitely happening. Gai tried to douse his pounding heart wit ha hard swallow. His lips quirked.

Was he supposed to be the first to say something, or something? Staring Don down just didn't feel right. He toed the floor with his sneaker.

“S-so.” He licked his lips and immediately felt like a creep. “Is something up?”

“Not exactly, it's just...” Don whined and rubbed the back of his neck. His lips pressed together in a pale line. “Oh, I shouldn't have-”

Gai narrowed the gap between them by a few steps. “I said it's fine, right? It's fine. I was sad and scared when you got hurt, too. Everybody's kinda scared right now.”

His neck got hot while he waited.

“It's not that.” Don looked down at his shoes and made obvious effort to keep his hands still at his sides. The effect was more distracting than his usual fidgeting. “I mean, it is that, but it's not _just_ that. I've been sitting in here thinking of everything I have to say, and now-”

“But I already know you like me, Don-san!” Gai's face broke out in a smile he had to stoop to direct into Don's line of sight. “Right? I already know, so it's okay.”

“That's not all you need to know.”

“Uh.” Gai's smile didn't exactly falter, but it took on a quizzical crookedness. “What else do I need to know? I already know you're from outer space. That's a deal breaker for some people, but not me!”

“I appreciate that.” Don gravitated toward the edge of his bed and sat down. “I'm not like the others, though.”

“I don't care!” Gai planted himself firmly at Don's side. “Even if you're li-” No, don't say that. “Even if you have a secret monster form or something, I don't care. You can show me, even.”

Don's mouth scrunched up the way it often did when he was trying not to laugh. Usually at Gai. Success! Kind of.

“That's... sweet, but it's not like that.”

“Y-yeah? Then what is it like?”

Don's hands were tight fists on his knees. “You don't know anything about me,” he said. “But it's more like... There's not much to know.”

Gai blinked. “Huh.”

“Luka and Marvelous and Joe's lives were always so hard.” Don sniffed. “And Ahim's fighting for her people, even if she was spoiled before. I'm not like that.”

Gai's eyebrows jumped and he leaned in. “You're not a spy, are you? And you got attached to everyone?”

He was only half-joking, but Don thumped him on the arm for it anyway. “Don't suggest dumb things when I'm trying to be honest!”

“Sorry!” Gai leaned away again and rubbed his arm. “You have a point, though, I guess. You do kinda stick out.”

“I'm normal. That's why. Or I was. I had a family, I went to school. I had this small, happy life that ended the day Zangyack attacked. My family bribed a ship's captain to take me off the planet, and I never saw them again. I didn't... really spend a lot of time around people again until the others took me in.”

Gai's heart did a failed somersault in his chest and pain rose warm into his eyes. “I'm sorry.”

“It's all right.” Now, Don leaned in close. Shoulder to shoulder. “I was scared to have a life like that again.”

Gai's hand found Don's and squeezed. “Because you could always lose it again.”

Don nodded and made a small, tight sound in his throat. “But you were- You are, somebody else who had a life like that. It was one more thing for me to be jealous of when you showed up, I guess, because it's all over you.”

Gai's face fell a little. Did he come off as soft or something? “I don't get it.”

“You don't have to.” Some of the pain had left Don's voice now. “But once I got over that...”

“Yeah?” Gai's enthusiasm mingled with concern.

“It bothered me less to think about stuff like that. And... you know, I started to think, 'If it was with Gai, that would be okay. And I'd protect that no matter what.' Stuff like that. So.”

Don's face and neck were red all the way to the collar of his shirt. Gai's smile wobbled.

“You know.” Gai picked at Don's comforter with the hand not clasping Don's. “The door's locked.”

“Eh?” Don turned wide eyes on him.

“Well!” Gai turned pink and looked at the ceiling. “We're going to be doing something really dangerous soon, right? And everybody, uh, everybody else is. Together. Tonight.”

Gai didn't want to reflect on his stint in Naked Pancake Hell, but his brain presented it as evidence anyway.

“No, I mean... You're thinking of that, too, right?”

A weird floaty feeling filled Gai's chest and rose up under the hot skin of his face. He grinned. Maybe, especially if Don was thinking about it, he didn't have to be all noble and chaste. Even if he would be completely capable should the need arise.

“If by that you mean that, then yeah!” Gai sprung up. “You'd be my first, but I can make up for that in enthusiasm.”

The red in Don's cheeks deepened, but he looked more boggled than embarrassed. “Really? Well, I know what to do, so don't worry.”

Gai blanched. “You do?”

“In theory!” Don fidgeted with the hem of his sweater.

Okay. That made more sense.

“Well, there's no shame in that!” Gai declared, probably a little too loudly. He sat back onto the side of the bed. Then he folded his hands on his lap like a patient kid. “So! Teach me.”

Don turned his body to face Gai. “You're sure?”

“Yup!” Gai had to resist the urge to leap up again. Posing wasn't appropriate right now. Probably. He scooched closer to Don and clasped both his hands. “I entrust myself to you.”

Don's fingers clenched around Gai's and he glanced away, shrugged his shoulders. “Do you have to say that so gravely?”

“It's an important thing, so I'm taking it with appropriate seriousness,” Gai said, sagely. “Uh, unless that makes you nervous.”

“Not really,” Don said. He met Gai's eyes and applied light pressure to his chest. Gai giggled and fell back. Don's bed wasn't nearly as narrow as the one in the cabin boy's cabin, so he didn't have to worry about knocking his head on the wall. Don lied down beside him. “But it's really important to you?”

“Absolutely.”

Don brightened. “I'm so glad.” He slid an arm around Gai's shoulders to pull him close and kissed him harder than the gentle words gave him any reason to expect.

Gai's eyes went wide and his lips smiled. It felt weird to kiss somebody with his eyes open, so he shut them again. They laid there for a second, pressed into each other, mouths moving subtly. Until Don's tongue flicked out to touch Gai's lips, and Gai remembered he had absolutely no idea how to kiss with tongues.

But, his rational mind immediately offered, could it really be that complicated? He sighed and parted smiling lips. The tip of Don's tongue swept over his and he just about melted.

Then their teeth clicked together and he decided that yes, yes, it could definitely be complicated. He reared back and Don sat up.

“I'm so sorry!” Don said, ducking his head. “I just really-”

“It's fine, it's fine!” Gai's face kind of ache when he grinned. He took both Don's hands and guided them to the knot in his scarf. He willed his smile to mellow, become tender. “Kissing's overreated anyway.”

Don caught on quick and slid Gai's scarf off his neck. “Maybe, but that's always my favorite part.”

“Favorite part of what?” Gai asked. His coy smile faltered when he reached for Don's tie and discovered it wasn't a clip-on. Good. Now he totally didn't look like a dork.

“Oh. Books. Just books.” Don put trembling fingers over Gai's and guided him through getting the tie off. “Never mind.”

Gai grinned and worked at the buttons of Don's shirt. These, at least, were comfortably familiar. “Don-san has kissing books?”

“Some!” Don said. The skin of his neck was very warm under Gai's fingertips, and pink. “Look, that's not important. Right?”

“Nope!” Gai's heart was beating so hard, shuttling blood to all the necessary places. Even if he'd been nervous, his body would have made his mind up for him by now. He warmed even more when Don shrugged his shoulders to let Gai roll his shirt down his arms. No star mark, just a couple freckles on arms way skinnier than Gai's. And smooth skin that pricked up under Gai's touch.

The undershirt came off next. It was hard to talk now. This both was and was not like fumbling around with another teenager. He was excited to the point of trembling, that wasn't new, but there was more to the excitement that made the process all the smoother.

He was comfortable. There was a certainty to the way they moved together, delight stealing the steadiness from their hands as they undressed each other.

Don made a thin sound and jumped when Gai's hands wandered from the bare skin of his chest and sides to his belt. Don was so hard – obviously, even under his clothes -and the sound was so cute that Gai couldn't help but feel accomplished despite not having done much yet.

“You nervous?” Gai asked, because that's what he was used to asking at this juncture.

“Yeah.” Don kept his lips pressed tight together as he slipped his own belt off. Gai felt, all at once, deeply relieved and vaguely cheated. Nobody ever just came out and said yes before. “But it's the good kind of nervous. Because it's important, right?”

Gai beamed. “Right!” He reached for Don's pants and immediately got distracted by how they caught on his bony hips.

“Ah! Gai!” Don yelped and squirmed back, whacking Gai on the back of his head. “Two things!”

Gai perked up. “Yes?”

“First, don't just yank off my pants without unbuttoning them.” Don's quickening breath didn't fit with the pout on his face. “And, second, this.”

Gai didn't get a chance to ask what 'this' was before Don leaped on him and flattened him to the bed. A long, high sound escaped him when their bodies pressed together, and he arched up to feel that again. Don kissed him and smothered further sounds with his lips. Don still tasted sweet, his lips were still soft, but he moved in a purposeful, hungry way that took Gai by surprise. Gai tried to match his enthusiasm and for the first time in recent memory found that very hard to do. Soon he was squashed very firmly into the mattress, sighing through his grinning mouth as Don moved on from his mouth to his neck and his shoulders.

“Oh, Don,” he sighed as his hands groped for the button on Don's fly. It was a tricky maneuver with all the squirming and grinding.

Don perked up, attentive, the hungry spell broken for a second. “Yes?” He tried to adjust his tie and looked lost when it wasn't there. “Am I going too fast?”

“You can go faster if you want!” Gai hauled him back down. “I mean, tomorrow's bound to be tough, right? We shouldn't waste time tonight if we don't want to.”

Don looked away. “I don't want to hurt you.”

Oh.

So that's how it was.

“Don.” Gai sat up a little and swallowed a whine at the friction that created. “I trust you, okay? Besides, you know what you're doing.”

“In theory.”

“And in practice I trust you.” Gai blew out a breath. Every pump of blood made him want to flinch. “So. Fast?”

A battle played out on Don's face before he slipped – with some difficulty – off of Gai and the bed. “W-wait here.”

“Aye aye.” Gai arranged himself in what he thought was a sultry position to do just that.

Don didn't go far, just to the little cabinet by his door. The Galleon had a bunch of little first aid kits around – Don's installation- and Don liked having a well-stocked one close at hand even at night in case someone rolled out of bed and hit their head.

“Don, I said it's fine,” Gai said.

Don's sharp shoulders jerked a little and he turned, sheepish, holding a little jar in both hands. Gai didn't recognize it. “I know, but, well.” He turned to the cabinet again and grabbed something else Gai didn't see. “Promise not to tell anybody what I'm about to say?”

“Sure,” Gai said, adjusting out of his sultry but uncomfortable pose.

“And take your pants off.”

“Gladly!” Gai tried to do so quickly for effect, but he was too hard and nervous to be anything but tender with himself. He kicked his pants off the edge of the bed. “So. What's that stuff?”

Don fiddled with the lid. “It's a gel for keeping burns and wounds and things like that moist and clean so they heal better. But it, uh, has alternative uses.”

As the words settled between them, Gai's lips lifted in a conspiratorial smile and Don's face turned cherry red.

“Don't tell anybody about that!” Don set the open jar on the edge of the bed and wrung his hands. “Especially don't tell them I know that. They'd never let me live it down.”

Gai's grin wobbled a little. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds about right.” He cleared his throat. “So.”

“Lie on your side,” Don said, turning the jar in his hands, not looking at Gai.

“You sure about that?” Gai asked, though he did it anyway.

“Who's the worldly space pirate and who's the cabin boy here, again?” Don asked, a barb of offense in his teasing tone. He stood to get out of his pants and his shorts and Gai watched with rapt fascination. Gai had managed to connive them all into going to a public bath with him as part of an Introduction to Earth Culture, so he knew ahead of time not to expect anything too shocking. Even in this state, anyone would admit that the sight of Don naked wasn't anything extraordinary.

But it was Don, and that called for a bout of deep, mostly unintentional staring on Gai's part. So much staring that Don crouched awkwardly at the edge of the bed, as if someone had suddenly walked in and also he didn't have any arms to cover himself.

Gai sat up and regarded Don very seriously. “Don.”

“Yes?”

“We can't have sex if you're hiding behind the bed.”

“I know that!” Don sprung up and practically leaped on Gai. “I'm just not used to somebody ogling me, okay? Would you be if you were me?”

“I've been ogling you for months.”

Don swallowed so hard Gai heard it, pulled back, and straightened up. “Okay.” He smiled. “Lie back down on your side and kind of keep one leg straight and bend the other.”

“Like this?”

“No. More like...” Don pursed his lips, concentrating as if retrieving old information. “The leg that's on the mattress, hold that out straight. The other, bend it at the knee but keep it in front of you.”

Gai did this and frowned up at Don. “You're sure this is right?”

“It's supposed to be easier on you if we do it this way,” Don said, putting on a moderately convincing tone of authority. He straddled Gai's leg and rubbed the back of his neck. “S-so.”

“So let's do it!” Gai said, squirming. The drum line beat of his heart made it impossible to ignore the pulsing hardness pressed awkwardly between the sheets and his hitched up leg. “You're a worldly space pirate, right? Don't be afraid to get a little enthusiastic.”

Don swallowed again and nodded. “Right. Okay.” He lifted Gai's leg with one hand and slipped the other where Gai couldn't exactly watch.

It was about what Gai expected, a slippery-cool pressure that warmed the more Don moved his fingers around, and-

“Ouch!” The whole 'in' part happened a lot faster than Gai had anticipated. He forced a grin and reached back to grab Don's hand and keep him from recoiling. “It's fine, it's fine! Just caught me by surprise. Keep going.”

Don met his eyes and returned the smile. “If you're sure.” He leaned over Gai a little and started to move his fingers once Gai let go of his wrist. He looked so cute, all full of concentration and purpose. Gai knew he was right to trust Don.

It only took a minute or so for it to stop hurting in a distracting way, and as the discomfort faded another, subtler sensation started to bubble to the surface of Gai's awareness. It made his deep, purposeful breaths come a little more shallow and his hips rock and twitch a little. It felt _good_ in the strangest way.

“How is it?” Don asked as he started to move in a more pointed, searching way.

Gai's back arched and he reached for one of Don's pillows to hold it to his chest and press his face into it. “Ah, it's great.” That wasn't entirely true, it was about as weird as it was good, but Don didn't need to hear that. “Keep it up.”

“Okay...”

A dense silence full of sighs followed, and a high sound from Gai broke it. His back arched and his muscles went stiff as if shocked. The spontaneous spark of pleasure knocked his heart off rhythm and sent a hot drop spattering onto his belly.

“Okay,” Gai said, the level of his voice fluctuating mid-word. He breathed. “Slow's not gonna work anymore.”

Don didn't need any more convincing. He withdrew his fingers immediately and started fumbling with the other thing he'd brought from the medicine cabinet. Gai watched him through half-open eyes.

“Dr. Don's always prepared, huh?” Gai asked, grinning cheekily.

“It reduces friction and makes it easier!” Don said, very quickly, his voice climbing in pitch. He winced through fumbling the condom on and blew out a big breath. “Okay. Here goes.”

“Yep!” Gai didn't brace himself. He figured it would make it worse if he got all keyed up, and maybe he was right. When Don grabbed his leg and positioned himself, the next step went way more smoothly than expected. The initial pinch cut his breath short, but the sound that escaped Don bled the pain right out of him. High and trembling, it cut off short once Don was fully inside him, smothered in gasps.

The feeling of Don's body trembling on top of him was just as overpowering as the sensation of being filled. Gai was still grinning, perfectly and completely happy. He beamed up at Don.

“Don. More.”

Don obliged, slowly, the tremulous sounds practically dripping from his lips as he rocked his hips to draw himself in and out of Gai's body. A heady mixture of intoxicating glee and legitimate physical pleasure let Gai ride it out with ease until the pain disappeared and Don found an angle and a rhythm that had them both gasping.

“Gai.” Don's fingertips pressed hard into Gai's thigh when he choked up the word.

Gai sighed and opened one eye to watch Don's face. All pink and unsteady, his eyes unfocused and barely open. “It's good,” Gai managed. “Don't stop.”

“I can't!” Don gripped Gai's thigh tighter and shut his eyes. His motions had a hard, rough snap to them now, and Gai wound up holding the pillow very tight to his chest as his body rocked on the mattress. His heart was pounding and his ears were ringing and-

“Ah!” Gai curled in on himself, face buried in the pillow. Heat splashed on his belly and his body tightened to the point of new pain around Don.

Don didn't stop, his hips kept pumping even as his thighs clamped down reflexively around Gai's extended leg. He babbled Gai's name over and over until his voice was just a keen, and when his lungs ran out of air he slumped.

Gai sat up to gather him, ignoring the sting when they parted. They leaned on each other for a few moments, gasping like castaways on a beach. They were both grinning drunkenly.

When the haze started to clear, Gai noticed how Don didn't breath any deeper when his eyes started to clear. His breaths stayed shallow, punctuated by the odd wince when his chest expanded. Gai paled and his conscience ached.

“Oh my god, you're still hurt.” He set Don back on the bed and scrambled for the medicine cabinet. Which wasn't the most comfortable thing to do. “Ow, ow, ow. Ah, Don, I'm so sorry!”

“Don't worry.” When Gai looked back, Don was lying on his back and smiling in a pleasant, dazed way. He returned quickly with a flat package the size of his palm, and Don sat up to get the condom off and into the trash bin by his bed before lying back again.

“I shouldn't have pushed you,” Gai said, picking at the package the tease it open. He peeled the backing off and twisted the compress between his hands to start the chemical reaction that would warm it up inside.

“I'll have to fight like this tomorrow, so it's not so bad in comparison,” Don said. He raised one arm to let Gai press the patch to the epicenter of the big bruise in his side. “And it was worth it.”

Gai sighed and tried his best to press the seal around the patch into place without hurting Don. “It was, huh?” he said. He reached for the box of tissues on Don's bedside/work/occasional dinner table and started wiping them off. “Uh. Sorry about your pillow.”

Don smothered a laugh behind tightly pressed lips and curled onto his unharmed side. “Don't worry about it.”

Gai joined him, sliding up close to tuck Don's fluffy head under his chin. “I'll sneak out early tomorrow and do the laundry, and nobody will be the wiser,” he said.

Don cuddled back against him. “Good.”

Silence, save for breathing and engine sounds. Gai didn't want to bother getting up to turn the light off, even.

“Gai?” Don said, suddenly, just as Gai was drifting off.

“Yeah?”

“On Earth, is now an appropriate time to tell you I love you?”

Gai flinched. He'd been so caught up in showing that through enthusiatic action that he'd sorto f neglected to just come out and say something. Which felt normal enough for him, but maybe it wasn't for Don. “Of course it is!”

Don relaxed. “I'm glad. I love you, Gai.”

“I love you, too, Don-san.”

“Don.”

Gai's face warmed. “Don.”

 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> //crawls to cup noodle

Marvelous didn't dream that night, but he slept fitfully and started awake often. Each time, Joe was there to wordlessly pull him back down into the blankets. Marvelous let Joe pull him in, ignored the anxiety that flared in him whenever someone offered him comfort. That was part of the fear that made the dreams, wasn't it?

Don't let anybody see you're just soft red stuff inside.

Don't show anybody your throat.

Don't need anybody.

They'll take your soft red insides and twist them, they'll die to save you, they'll leave one way or another and you'll be hurting for something you wish you hadn't gotten spoiled by having.

Those thoughts kept him up a few minutes every time, but Joe was there, silent and sure, guarding his back like he always did.

Morning came too soon for once. Bright winter sunlight through the port holes brought him around slowly. He stirred and filled his lungs with cool air. He didn't want to move.

“Guuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuys!”

But that wouldn't be an option.

Beside him, Joe groaned. “That didn't last.”

“At least it doesn't sound like he's being murdered or anything,” Marvelous said. He sat and put a hair through Joe's hair until it caught on a tangle. Joe patted his hand away and slid out of bed.

Then the crashing started.

“You sure about that?”

Marvelous planted a foot lightly on Joe's back and pushed. “Get outta my way and we'll get dressed and rescue him from himself.”

“Right.” Joe reached back to grasp Marvelous' foot and rub the arch before he gathered and struggled into the change of clothes he'd brought from his cabin the night before.

Marvelous just wore yesterday's clothes over again.

Everyone was in the hallway, even Navi. Luka was only partly dressed and didn't look all too pleased about it.

And Gai was dragging poor Doc around by a rope or something. For some reason. He jogged up and down the hall over and over with Doc fumbling after him, cackling while the others boggled at him.

“What the Hell's all this?” Marvelous asked, tracing the bright – truly bright, alight, glowing – red line between Gai and Doc. It was beautiful, but he wasn't about to let on that he thought that. Yet.

Gai raised a hand. His end of the thread sprouted vaguely from the center of his palm. He'd looped it around his fingers. “Threads to cut threads!”

He sounded so proud.

Ahim stepped forward, frowning in her gentle way. “I'm afraid I don't follow. Are you suggesting this has something to do with the texts the doctor was translating?”

“I am!” Gai declared.

“Explain.” Joe crossed his arms.

“I'm trying! How did it go? Everybody's got to embrace the winds of fate with courage.”

“Something like that,” Doc said, fidgeting.

“So,” Gai said, putting on the same tone he did when he tried to educate them on Super Sentai. “If threads to cut threads are important, and this is a thread, that might be what we need.”

“Or it's a curse!” Navi offered.

“Shush. And! If it's gained by embracing the winds of fate, what do you think it is?”

A resounding chorus of shrugs followed.

Gai pouted. “Right. You're not from Earth so the parallel's kinda lost.” He cleared his throat. “Okay, let's do an experiment 'cause I know what made it work for me. Everybody look at, uh, the person you came out here with and think about that person.”

“That's it?” Luka asked.

“Like, think really hard!” Gai waved a hand at all of them. “Come on, try!”

Ahim and Luka turned to one another and lightly joined hands. They wore the same gentle smile now.

Marvelous shifted and rolled his eyes, only to catch sight of Joe as they made their way to that side. The edge had left his eyes and he stood there, watching Marvelous, waiting, inviting. So Marvelous turned, and in that moment he couldn't have brought himself to think of anything but Joe.

Lying in the dust with him. The long months to themselves, figuring one another out. Each and every time Joe followed him up to the crow's nest.

Joe holding his heavy hurt for him in the engine room.

He liked Joe. He loved Joe.

For how long had the sight of the guy who watched his back filled him with tender, alien warmth? At what point had he begun to recognize the feeling for what it was, for how powerfully this quiet resonance affected him? When did he first understand that steady, soothing presence as one of love?

How fortunate was he to have stumbled onto it on that burnt out planet?

Marvelous could tell himself that Gai was just being his usual inveterate sap self with his little experiment, but he couldn't argue with that feeling and the gentle tug at his hand dared him to argue with Gai.

The line didn't spool itself out like he'd imagined it would. It simply wasn't and then was, lightly suspended like the last strand of a spider's destroyed web between his hand and Joe's. It sparkled, holding the light, not throwing it. The red didn't reflect.

Navi let out a long, melodic, “Oohh!” and fluttered from Marvelous' head to Joe's, scanning the line. “Look at that!” She buzzed across the hall to where Ahim and Luka were marveling at the thread tangled around their joined hands. “And Luka and Ahim, too! What the heck is this stuff, Gai?”

“It's fate!” Gai pumped his fist and spun on his heel. The thread passed through him, mercifully, though Marvelous had to wonder why. “And courage, I guess, but, I mean, look!”

“We are looking,” Joe said.

Ahim nodded. “And though it is lovely, we fail to see the connection.”

Gai made a sound of utter dismay. “The red thread of fate! I guess you don't know it in space, but it's this old Earth superstition about, uh.”

Marvelous wasn't about to let an awkward pause delay his getting an explanation. He'd lash Gai with the damn glitter-string if it would get him talking. “About what?”

“About love.”

“Ah.”

The silence came, and before it passed every face in the room had turned to inspect all the others. Gai and Doc looked the most embarrassed out of them all, though Joe gave them stiff competition with the way he stared down at his boots. But Marvelous couldn't bring himself to feel embarrassed, just... struck, somehow. Joe's fate, it turned out, really was sealed the moment they met. Here was the proof.

Gai cleared his throat. “So. The story goes that when you're born the gods of fate attach a red thread to your finger, and they tie the other end to the person that you're, uh.” Gai's eyes met Marvelous' and he flinched back into his speech. “That you're fated to marry! The person you're fated to marry. And some stories say they tie it to your ankle and not your finger. And, um, none of them mention it just kinda coming out of your hand. But.”

Marvelous' face tried to do something weird that he forced into a disdainful leer. “Yeah? Then why's it only visible now?”

Gai flinched and swiftly recovered, patching over his shaken expression with his deadpan voice. “I dunno.”

“More to the point,” Joe said, rearranging himself into a posture that betrayed slightly less embarrassment, “How do we use it against that thing?”

“With all due respect, it's worth remembering that the legend said nothing of a weapon,” Ahim interjected. “It is likely that Gai-san doesn't know, and he cannot be blamed.”

“Could always garotte him with it,” Marvelous mused, letting his fingers catch the thread. He caught himself looking down at it. It had a pulse to it, a slight ebb and flow to the intensity of its light he only noticed on closer inspection.

“That's kinda anticlimactic,” Gai said. He winced under Joe's glower.

Marvelous hummed, feigning thoughtfulness. “I disagree.”

“Obviously we gotta test it out,” Luka said. She was trying to craft a cat's cradle out of her and Ahim's thread. And failing. “No sign of trouble just yet, right? We've got time for a little preliminary scheming.”

“I prefer to call it research and development,” Doc said. His mouth was a wide, sickly, giggly line that wavered between smile and cringe.

Marvelous huffed and took to the stairs. “Whatever you call it, we're doing it upstairs where there's room to move and faster access to the guns if something does come up.”

“And more things to break,” Joe pointed out. He followed Marvelous far more closely than the thread necessitated.

“We're only gonna break a few things.”

\---

“Ooooh, that looks properly dangerous!”

Navi was perilously close to the humming line drawn between Joe and Marvelous' hands, but something told Joe she could roost right on it and go unharmed. The threads could haul Doc around if Gai wanted that, but Joe couldn't imagine them harming anything he cared for.

Even when they'd just used one to effortlessly guillotine a candlestick in two with a loop and the tug of two wrists. The steel clattered to the table and Joe made a small sound of approval.

“Nothing one of the sabers couldn't do, though,” Marvelous said.

“Well, we don't exactly have a relevant test subject,” Doc said, folding his arms in the fussy and not at all stern way he sometimes did. The thread he shared with Gai had flickered away minutes ago. Good thing, too, considering how inconvenient it would be to have lines running all over the ship at all times.

“So we're going ahead on vague prophecies all over again,” Marvelous said, adjusting his stance to keep his weight on one foot. He hooked a thumb in his belt. “Could be worse.”

“Could be a lot worse,” Joe said.

“Anyway.” Marvelous went to take his coat from the rack. “Let's head down to the surface and see what the situation's like down there.”

\---

Scoping out the situation swiftly turned into stopping for breakfast. It didn't surprise Joe all that much, in all honesty. Marvelous was hurting – more in his heart than in his body, but still – and his first route to recuperation was always food.

Joe, for his part, wasn't keen on stopping to eat. Not because he wasn't hungry, but because stopping at one of the brave little bakeries that had opened up as normal so soon after the attacks entailed a non-zero amount of sitting still and peaceful in the cool sunlight that poured in through the cafe's wide street-facing windows. It meant watching Marvelous, even though he didn't mean to watch, and thinking when he absolutely didn't want to think.

'The person you're fated to marry.'

Where did he get off thinking about that now? What right did he have, with all that had happened and all that was sure to happen, to sit there in a cloud of coffee vapors and baked bread smells and pale sunlight watching the way Marvelous' hands moved?

The next day or so, maybe longer, was sure to be hard.

There was already so much hurt behind them. Some of it still hung around their chatty table, like the powder-ozone smell hours after a gunfight. Joe had no right to feel content in such a moment.

And yet.

Looking at Marvelous, watching him command the table in the subtle ways he sometimes could when in his quieter moods, Joe recognized for an instant that it wasn't happiness or even contentment that he felt. It was gratitude. To go on to this quiet moment with the memory of Marvelous' sobbing, huffing body pressed against him still so fresh in his mind, he was fortunate.

For them all, after losing and enduring so much, fortune felt so kind in that moment. There was something deeply precious he didn't often consider in the way that moments like this could still occur in the wake of the deepest darkness in a life.

“Say, Joe-san.”

Pop! The feel-good bubble burst and the chatter of the cafe and the grumble of emergency and commute traffic outside converged on Joe. Gai grinned at him across the table.

“What?”

Gai wilted and set his coffee down. “Well, you had a really nice smile on for a second, but it's gone now.”

“Hm?” Marvelous turned his bread-stuffed face up from his plate to look at Joe. “Did I miss it?”

The smile threatened to return as Joe flicked an almond slice off his roll and into Marvelous' face. “You weren't quick enough, captain.”

“I gotta get my energy up to be faster, obviously.” Marvelous grabbed for Joe's roll, and Joe let it go. It disappeared in three big bites.

“I thought you were sleeping better now?” Gai said over the rim of his coffee mug.

“Better doesn't mean earlier,” Doc said, very quietly, not looking up from the toast he'd decided to meticulously cut up for whatever fussy reason he did things.

Gai blinked. “Eh?”

A crash at the front of the shop cut off Doc's stammered reply. A wave of cries and chair legs clattering against tile worked backward from the door until the whole place was alive with panic. Joe and the other pirates jumped to their feet in time to see, over the heads of reeling patrons, a half dozen Phantoms escort a wildly gesticulating Nicess Gill into the shop.

“Greetings on this fine morning, the day of my conquest of your puny planet, worms!” The Phantoms fanned out as he walked in, their heavy hands dragging on the floor as they lurched and lunged at any bystanders standing by too closely. Neither they nor Nicess seemed all that aware of the pirates.

“I'm getting real sick of this guy already,” Joe said, reaching into his pocket for his Mobirate.

“Yeah, he's-” Gai cut himself off with a squawk. “Ohmigod!”

“Ginga Rebirth!” A flash snapped over the crowd, its epicenter a table in the far corner. And a woman.

Nicess and his cronies spun around. “Who dares?”

“Ginga Pink!” Gai called out in unison with the stranger. And grabbed Joe's shoulder. And shook it. “Saya!”

Nicess waved a hand and the Phantoms gathered. “I'm afraid I don't recognize you. Phantoms, take care of the interloper.”

“You're the interloper here!” Gina Pink stepped forward to place herself between the charging Phantoms and cowering civilians. She clashed with one of them, parrying the swings of its claws with the curved dagger she carried. “Did you think for a second it would go differently for your kind the third time around?”

Gai gave Joe's shoulder a break and flitted over to Marvelous. “Marvelous-san, we gotta help her!”

“I was getting to it.” Marvelous swatting Gai aside. “Gokai change.”

Joe and the others followed suit, and suddenly every available set of eyes was on them. Joe smirked behind his visor. This felt familiar enough that it put him at ease.

Nicess stomped one of his high-heeled boots and pointed a too-long finger. “Space pirates!”

“Eh?” Ginga Pink turned her head their way just long enough for the Phantom to surge at her and driveh er backward into a full table. She sprang back up. “You!”

“We're good space priates, I swear!” Gai threw himself into the fray and Joe followed while the others opened (controlled) fire on the Phantoms. “Anyway, I'll explain later! But he's the bad guy here!”

“Quit blabbering and fight!” Joe dove ahead of Gai, blades snapping out in tight arcs to avoid any innocent injuries. These Phantoms were smaller, though not by much, and quicker than the hulks he remembered.

They reminded him less of the monkey.

“Sorry!” Gai vaulted a table to take a swipe at Nicess. A Phantom dove under the head of his spear and-

It cleaved in two. Its inky-bloody threads separated and it fell to the floor in two gurgling halves that immediately knitted new halves.

Gai had doubled the damned thing. The pluralized Phanroms converged on him.

Nicess cackled. “Fools!” He picked himself up off the heap he'd fallen into when Gai came for him. “You dare to stand against the emmissaries of a god?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Marvelous jumped in to cover Gai, his saber crashing flashily against the Phantoms and driving them back for a moment. “We got a personal score to settle with your god, so maybe give the missionary work a rest.”

“Unlikely.” Nicess lifted his near-absent chin and pooched out his lips. The Phantoms, minus the two – no, four – tangling with Don and Ginga Pink, swarmed around Nicess. The self-appointed emperor chuckled. “You were the sacrifice, weren't you?”

“Maybe.” Marvelous took a long stride forward, sword tapping on his shoulder. “Still alive, though, so I don't think it counts.”

Something cold pulled at Joe, made him step for Marvelous. “Don't.”

Naturally, Marvelous showed no interest in listening. He leveled his saber at Nicess, heedless of the Phantoms. “Well? How many times do I gotta cut 'em in half before they're small enough to step on?”

“Don't bother.” Nicess stepped back so that the Phantoms could cluster. The other pirates, similarly, ran for Marvelous. “It is a shame you're alive, though, isn't it? Perhaps that's what troubles my god.”

Marvelous' head tipped back. “What?”

“They do more than divide.”

It was true. Before the pirates could move to pull Marvelous away, the threads that made up the Phantoms had begun to unravel at the joints.

Then, suddenly, Joe remembered the teeming bodies and cords roiling under the thin skin of the massive Phantom that had tangled with their mecha earlier.

Cries rang out, the pirates and Ginga Pink came flying to Marvelous' side.

Only to be flung back with terrible force by a sudden snap and outpouring of energy as the Phantoms burst at the seams. Joe went sailing through the air, low to the ground, to crash into the bar. Coffee cups and dislodged tiles rained on him. His ears rung. When he had his bearings and his sword back, he saw the tangled forms reaching – armless, almost, just attracted masses warping sickly outward – for Marvelous.

The others were still gathering themselves. Marvelous lashed out with his saber. It skimmed through the threads like a hand through water, accomplishing nothing.

Other thread-masses had pooled around his feet to hold him fast.

The Phantom shamble pulled itself together, grew. The cold pull on Joe had a grip on his heart. He planted his sword in the floor to help get him on his feet.

Another harsh snap and the threads coallesced. The Phantom that formed from these thousandfold threads was stocky in the body, long in the arms, and possessed monstrous hands with long curling fingers.

Joe watched Marvelous stagger back on his newly freed feet only to be snapped up like a doll.

Seeing him struggle, Joe felt the gripping chill in his chest wind itself up into a knot that worked its way, aching, through his veins.

His breath rasped all around him in the helmet.

Red sliced through the air.

A taut, shivering line between two points.

The next turn came about through soldier's instinct and pirate improvisation. Joe pulled, the line stretched and slackened. He whipped his wrist up and over, and the thread sailed into a loop over the beast. He pulled again, hard, and the Phantom's body separated at the shoulders.

Forever.

Its skin puckered and shriveled away and its wormy insides thumped to the floor. The whole mass sputtered and hissed itself away to vapor.

Marvelous and Nicess both scrambled back, Marvelous on his backside kicking away and Nicess stumbling. Joe forgot Nicess. He ran for Marvelous while the others converged the retreating Zangyack.

He didn't see Nicess beam himself out of the shop, but he heard Gai and Luka cursing him for cheating. He was preoccupied.

Gokai Red fell away, leaving Marvelous behind. His lips were pale, but they smiled. His eyes were wide and didn't, not until Joe let his transformation drop so that Marvelosu could see his eyes. The thread winked out. Marvelous swayed a little. Joe reached for his shoulder.

“Steady there.” A smile tried to pull at his mouth. A grateful smile.

Sifting sounds, feet moving through rubble, approached. Joe looked up at the dozens of eyes, Earthlings and Sentai both. His team, Gai's people, and this strange woman in pink.

“Sorry I couldn't be of more help,” the pink lady said. She fiddled with an elaborate bracelet and scanned the frightened faces around them. She was small and youngish, and wore colorful pins in her brown hair. Joe judged her to be fairly nondescript. “I didn't come here this morning expecting to clean up any trash.”

To Gai, it seemed, she was anything but unremarkable. Gokai Silver came scrambling over the rubble to bow himself in half. Joe could hardly watch.

“Saya-san!” Heh eld out a hand and immediately retracted it. “I'm- You know what, you probably already know who we are. Considering, uh.”

Saya nodded, smiling. “You've met my husband.”

Gai, for whatever reason, squealed and broguht his balled fists up to the part of his helmet that corresponded closest to his mouth. Then the squeal abruptly stopped, and he cocked his head. “You mean Hyuuga-san, right?”

“Of course. Who else?”

The squeal returned at double volume and Joe was glad when Doc walked up to clap Gai on the back of his head with the butt of his gun. “I thought your suit looked familiar! So you're in Gingaman.”

Luka came up to shove Doc aside and put a hand on her hip. “Say, Ginga Pink.”

“Yes?”

“Is everybody on your team married?”

Saya smiled in a tight, polite way that made Joe want to haul all three of those jokers away from her. “I'm not sure what you're asking, but no.”

Luka scoffed. “Figures.”

Gai made an attempt at a placating gesture before turning back to Saya. “Hyuuga-san isn't around, is he?”

“No, he's at home with our children. I'll tell him that I ran into you, and that you're doing well.”

It was at this point that Gai literally shrieked the word, 'babies,' and Joe decided that this exchange absolutely had to end.

“Okay, that's enough smalltalk,” Joe said. He caught Gai by his collar and hauled him a few feet back.

Gai wriggled like a caught kitten. “But I'm curious! And it's interesting, right? Love between two warriors is an amazing thing! Right? Right?”

“Right!” Saya pumped her fist.

Joe's face warmed and he wished for his helmet.

“Really, if we hadn't lived together as warriors I might not have wanted to marry him at all.” Her polite smile turned gentle, directed at someone far, far away from the ruined cafe. “It's one reason I always felt so fortunate to be chosen as a warrior.”

Gai swooned and only Joe's unwavering grip held him upright. “That's so romatnic! And you're stronger for having that love in your heart, right? Right?”

“I believe I am.” Her smile was so vibrant that Joe couldn't help but believe her instantly. “So is Hyuuga, and I truly believe we're strongest together.”

“Now, if the rest of you would get married, maybe-”

“Luka-san, that can't be how it works!” Gai tore free of Joe's hold to wave Luka away.

Saya frowned. “How what works?”

“Never you mind.” Marvelous was finally on his feet. He came to lean on the crumbling coffee bar. “Can you make sure these gawkers get out of here safe while we get back to our ship?”

“You can count on me.” Saya followed Joe with her eyes when he went to stand by Marvelous. “Take care.”

“You can count on us,” Joe said. He set a flat hand low on Marvelous' back, out of her sight. Marvelous' breathing slowed a little. “Come on, everybody.”

It took a moment for Gai to quit fidgeting, but they eventually shuffled their way back out onto the street. A quiet turbulence rolled through Joe's heart as they walked through the cold, flake-scattered air. The light weight of Marvelous listing against him, not wounded but drained somehow, was burden and gift in one. Fears new and old could shake them all, but the bonds that drew out that silent vulnerability could fortify them against the onslaught. And they might yet prove themselves more than a simple defense of the heart.

Maybe, as the omens suggested, they could be wielded with deadly effect against the embodiment of those fears.

 


	17. Chapter 17

His head still wasn't right. It was full now, but full and right were too different. He'd traded a patchy record of his existence assembled from the secondhand observations of another and traded it for something that was whole and so much more. It was jumbled, tangled, in something larger than the man-skin that Marvey gave this thing. This thing that was him now.

It was disorienting, to say the least, to step out of half existence and into a body that was like his but remembered a formless, shifting existence in which it was honored and fed. In which it was revered. He knew intellectually that he didn't need any more hungers. He'd always been a creature of consumption. He burned through things, though places, through little hungry waifs like Marvey. It was just his nature to take the best deal at the expense of the second best.

His wasn't a mind that needed expansion to the tangible, graspable prospect of total control. It made everything below that seem dull and unappealing.

Basco was satisfied, but only provisionally.

In the moment, at least, the ship was nice. Mr. Knockoff Prince of Neo Zangyack or whatever obviously had money to throw around, even if he hadn't allocated nearly enough of it to his fleet. His little seat of operations was spacious and comfy, if a little garish. It was made up more like a terrestrial building than the Gigant Horse Basco remembered from his few trips aboard. The wood paneling and carpet and wallpaper throughout made him hesitate to think of it as a ship at all. The stairs between decks had shiny wooden bannisters and purple runners up and down. It was quiet; during his long stalk through the corridors he heard only the sounds of life and the odd wafting string of music. The wall-spanning window looking out on Earth from the expensive lounge he'd found himself in felt more like the front panel of a fish tank.

Nicess Gill clearly hated being in space.

Of course, it wasn't as though it was Basco's favorite thing either. There was a freedom in space that his life planetside had never been able to provide, even with Zangyack running the majority of the civilized universe for so many years. In Basco's long memory, spacing around was the closest he'd ever gotten to complete freedom. It was, like everything, a trade-off. But it was a worthy one.

He caught Nicess Gill's skulking form in the reflections on the glass before the Zangyack spoke up, but he didn't let on.

“I trust you find the facilities comfortable?”

Basco straightened his shoulders abruptly and turned. “They're acceptable,” he said. He narrowed his eyes. “What's with the 'poor me,' expression?”

Nicess winced and made his back rigid. Good. He'd already managed to screw something up. Perfect. “I encountered some difficulties in the course of an excursion to the planet's surface,” he said, stiffly. “It's nothing to worry about, I assure you.”

“Is it?” Basco circled him. “I'd hate to think you keep things from me.”

“I just don't want to trouble you with unnecessary details.”

“Details about those pirates, maybe?” As much as he hated it, the thing he'd been before he was himself again had given him an attachment to knowing about Marvey. No longer exclusively the strategic necessity it had been when he was playing cook or racing Marvey to the Treasure, it was a new hunger that had him wanting to scratch off his own skin.

Nicess Gill broke out in a sudden sweat that ran down his neck to slide under his cape. “As it turns out, yes.”

Basco brightened, flashing his teeth. He grabbed Nicess by the shoulder and spun him around. “Well, that's splendid!”

Nicess sweat harder and tried to smile. “Is it?”

“Oh, certainly,” Basco said. He touched the corner of his mouth with his tongue and let his smile turn vicious. He raised his eyebrows in an attempt to look a little friendlier. Nicess wasn't the vicious kind, just ambitious and callous and dumb. “You've confirmed that they're still on Earth, haven't you? And they'd make a lot of trouble if we didn't know, wouldn't they?”

Nicess cleared his throat and straightened up. “Well. With all due respect, it's not as though we know where they've anchored. Or if they've anchored. They could be floating around in the trash fields for all we-”

“It will be fine,” Basco said, his voice very level and bordering on kind with a great deal of effort. This seemed to put Nicess at ease. Somewhat. He looked less likely to go tearing down the halls in terror, at least. “Marvey's easy enough to lure out, as much as he likes to play the cool type. We'll just raise a little racket and watch him walk right up to us like a hungry dog.”

Nicess swallowed. “I'm not so certain that will work.”

“You doubt me?” Nicess' showy armor creaked under Basco's fingers.

“I don't dare underestimate an enemy,” Nicess said around the lump in his throat. “I nearly lost my life not counting on their having a new weapon.”

Basco's smile flopped. “I see. Well.” He shoved Nicess away and started for the door. “No matter. What do you say to a little party to announce the next emperor of Earth? That ought to draw him out.”

As expected, Nicess followed like a puppy promised treats.

\---

It wasn't easy to predict just how the lines would behave. Sometimes they caught on one another in the crew's attempts to test their capabilities, other times not. Marvelous suspected it came down to the individual wills of the points at the ends of each line,which even with this crew was proving a difficult thing to synchronize.

“Doc, damn it, try and hold your side tighter.” Marvelous was standing on the couch to try and get some tension in the line he shared with Joe. He'd nearly bowled himself over twice now, yanking on it. They'd managed to create an awkward, spotty net of sorts. The girls looked bored.

“I am trying,” Doc said, shrinking. He wound another half a meter of the thread around his hand. It made no difference. The thread continued to sag. “Besides, it's not like you're doing better.”

Marvelous scoffed. It was always funny – and a little heartening – when Doc's backbone materialized. “Yeah, well.” He turned his hand and watched the lines he's wound around it glitter. At that moment, the line phased through Ahim and Luka's line to dangle by itself between he and Joe. He grumbled and stamped his foot. “Come on!”

“It would be helpful if we could simply entangle them as we pleased,” Ahim said. Her thread with Luka winked out of existence and they both moved to the sofa to displace Marvelous and sit down.

Joe sighed and settled on his workout bench. “They're not the most useful things if they just do whatever they want,” he said. He twirled their thread on his finger, contemplating it. “But I'm glad I had it back there.”

A shudder crept up Marvelous' back and he threw it off with a shrug. “Yeah.” He let his hand drop. “But I don't know how useful they'll be if they just get knotted up together whenever they're out.”

“Or when they won't stay tied together when that'd be more convenient,” Luka added.

Gai hummed and sat himself down on the arm of the sofa. “I feel like it's not one of those things you can just train to work however you want whenever you want,” he said. He set his head in his hands.

“Then what the Hell good is it?” Marvelous snapped, the lingering chill in him sharpening his voice.

His line flickered and fizzled. He didn't look at Joe. The quiet that descended only made it easier to walk away.

“I'm going up,” he said, dryly.

“Marveloues-san.” Gai's voice tugged at him. “We can figure it out.”

“Let him go.” Joe's voice was already distant. Marvelous climbed the stairs fast.

“But-”

“Let him go.”

The air was thin this high up, but the cold bothered him more. Even living his whole life in space, he'd never gotten used to the chill. As a child he'd spent uncounted hours tucked up in the warmest corners of engine rooms. That was his quiet, alone place then.

Now it was the crow's nest.

Now he came up to the cold to let it leech the sick feeling out of him. The confines of the nest made him feel a little freer when he was feeling like a cornered animal. Looking into the distance had a way of bringing things into focus, even when that was the last thing he needed.

When the last thing he needed was to be missing engine room corners, to be remembering the instant they stopped feeling safe altogether, to have the feeling that sent him down there come bobbing to the surface like flotsam.

It made him feel sicker and colder than he otherwise would.

Standing there in the wind, holding his elbows, trying to forgive himself.

Wondering why it was so hard.

Wondering, more than anything, why all this had to happen _now_. It wasn't as if he only now remembered. The memory had sat in the back of his mind since the bastard first reappeared. It was always there, quiet, somehow insulated from the rest of him.

When and why had it started to hurt him again?

The hatch creaked, like he knew it would and hoped it wouldn't.

“Permission to come up, Captain?”

Marvelous shrugged and wondered if Joe could see it. Dinner was hours ago and night came fast in the winter besides. “Came all this way, didn't you? Might as well come meddle like you wanted to.”

“Don't call it that,” Joe said. The hatch creaked and clanged shut.

Marvelous was sorry, but he didn't say it. He didn't say anything. How did he keep tricking himself into believing that Joe's presence comforted him when it put a knot in his throat like this?

Joe touched his elbows. Testing him. Marvelous didn't move and just let Joe slide his arms around him.

“What are you doing up here this time?” Joe asked into his shoulder.

“It's nothing.” That was easier to say than sorry. “You can go back down if you're gonna be a pest.”

Joe tightened his arms and Marvelous' chest ached. “Like Hell. Tell me.”

Marvelous could feel himself shrinking back into Joe, and as much as he tried he couldn't force his arms to lift and throw him off. Hadn't he wanted this several times before and told himself he didn't?

“You already know,” he said. It was becoming obvious that everyone did, or at least had some idea. Knowing that made him sink faster, feel sicker.

“I know a part of it,” Joe said at length. His arms and chest were stiff. Maybe he wasn't entirely comfortable like this either.

'Jealous?'

Marvelous filled his hot lungs with cold air and said nothing.

“Does it bug you for people to know?” Joe asked, quietly. The wind almost carried the words away.

“Guess it's inevitable.” Marvelous tried to swallow his words and failed. “Don't know how I tricked myself into thinking it wasn't.”

Joe hummed and the sound worked through Marvelous. “Nothing I can say is the same, but...” It was weird to witness Joe at a loss for words. Usually he meant to be silent and short. “I can relate on some level.”

Marvelous always imagined he'd be angry to hear that.

He felt almost cheated.

“Yeah?”

The fringe of Joe's hair brushed Marvelous' face when he nodded. “When Sid died, I stopped thinking about him for a long time.”

Something stung Marvelous and he didn't want to name it. He burrowed back into Joe. “How long's a long time?”

“Months, almost a year.” Some of the stiffness left Joe's body and he leaned them both back, Joe resting against the mast and Marvelous resting against Joe. “When it started eating at me again, I didn't even know why. It'd hit me at random times, like I'd wake up in the middle of the night and be up for hours.”

Marvelous made a small sound in his chest. He'd noticed some change in Joe – it was hard for him not to – but at the time he'd just let it lie. He'd just let Joe wander around and exercise and busy himself into going back to sleep whenever he heard him rifling around in the early hours. Why shouldn't he want to be left alone? That was all Marvelous wanted back then, after all.

“You cry about it?” Marvelous asked, half joking and sick at that half of himself.

“A lot.” If Joe felt any shame, he didn't let it show in his clipped reply. He shifted to butt his chin against Marvelous' head. “But I didn't wanna bother you with that.”

Marvelous grunted. “Idiot. I wouldn't have cared.”

“Maybe.” Joe untangled Marvelous' fingers from his sleeves so he could hold his hands. “But I didn't think about that so much. I didn't feel anything about it for so long, and when I felt something again it hurt so bad that was all I could think about. And it took so long. Like a fragmentation injury, kind of.”

“What's that?”

“Hard to explain,” Joe said. He drummed his fingers on Marvelous' hands. “It happens to soldiers and civilians in war zones most, I guess. Fragments of ammunition or exploded objects get trapped in the soft tissues of your body, and sometimes they just sit there. Your body forms scar tissue around them to protect itself. But metal's not soft like your body is, so eventually it starts to cut through to the rest of you and hurt you.”

“Ah.” Marvelous couldn't say much more.

It was very dark, so dark that he nearly jumped when red light cut through the air around them. The fickle thread had returned, lighting the nest and tangling around them. Right hand to right hand, all wrapped up.

It made the air feel warmer.

“It's pretty late,” Joe said. “Wanna go to bed?”

Marvelous sighed and looked down at the thread wound around his hand. “I dunno about bed, but I wanna go back to my room for a while. It's cold up here.”

\---

Marvelous was a warm and welcome weight against his chest.

The point of this wasn't to be half naked and smashed into the leather of Marvelous' desk chair, but here he was with Marvelous leaning into him and kissing him so hard his lips burned. Marvelous was naked already, just flesh and determination and hunger pinning Joe to the chair and grinding against his lap.

It wasn't supposed to turn out like this, but they were both so hungry and this was easier than speaking. Joe let his hands roam up and down Marvelous' arching back. It was smoother than his own, like most of Marvelous. Despite growing up in space, it always felt like Marvelous was built for cutting through water, all his lines longer and smoother than Joe's.

It made it easy to forget how strong he was.

“Watch it.” Joe hissed the words against Marvelous' lips when fingertips dug too deep into his shoulder.

Marvelous leaned back and grinned down at him. “My bad.” He was hard and his lips were red. “Guess I'm getting impatient waiting for you to deliver on your word. You chickened out last time.”

Joe ran his tongue along his lower lip. His cock ached in the confines of his jeans. “You gotta get off me if you're that impatient.”

Marvelous smirked and climbed off him. “I don't want you all tender with me this time,” he said, dropping down between Joe's knees to unbuckle his belt.

Joe winced and forced himself to be still while Marvelous got his pants off. It proved impossible. He squirmed and hissed when his cock came free and shuddered when Marvelous touched him. “You sure about that?”

“Mmhm,” Marvelous hummed, leaning in close to kiss up Joe's thigh. He turned dark eyes up at Joe and held his gaze. “I wanna feel how much you want me. Not how scared you are of hurting me.”

Some of the heat drained out of Joe, hearing that. “I'm not.”

“You are,” Marvelous said firmly. He unlaced Joe's boots and cast them and his pants off into a corner. Then, eyes still stern and strong, he set his cheek on Joe's knee and smiled a small smile. “And you don't have to be. I know you wouldn't hurt me like I know you'll always come back to me.”

“I punched you in the face the other day,” Joe said, the words crackling through his suddenly dry throat.

Marvelous' gaze didn't waver. “You know this is different.”

Joe sighed. It was. And he didn't know why he bothered arguing. “Move.”

“Nah.” Marvelous nuzzled his thigh. “I wanna touch you some more this time. Get that stuff from Doc out.”

Joe's hands shook a little when he reached for the drawer pull, and even more working the lid off the jar Marvelous had conned Doc out of the other day. How did he manage to so consistently be a victim to his nerves when Marvelous could charge ahead?

Marvelous took the jar with steady hands and wiped those thoughts from Joe's mind with a light touch of his tongue. Joe's hips twitched and he gasped, simultaneously thrilled and terrified to have Marvelous' all-devouring mouth a teasing inch from the head of his prick.

The anxiety disappeared along with several inches of his flesh in an instant, and his head rolled against the back of the chair.

“You're playing a dangerous game, Marvelous,” he managed to grit out as he watched Marvelous through half-shut eyelids. Talented or not, Marvelous was enthusiastic and eager, which made it difficult for Joe to keep himself in check. He was far from careful with his teeth, but he soothed the sting away with long laps of his tongue so dutifully.

Marvelous had his right hand between his legs, working slippery fingers inside himself as his hips jerked and little noises vibrated out of his body and into Joe's

“Hey.”

Marvelous was breathing hard.

“Hey.” Joe tapped Marvelous' temple, put a hand through his tossed hair. “Stop.”

Marvelous slowed his tongue and pulled back. His eyes were lazy and dark and hungry.

Joe scooped him up under the arms when he stood, let him cling to his neck as he kissed him.

“Joe.” Marvelous broke the kiss to let his name slip out on a strained breath. “Please.”

That word knocked a hole in Joe's restraint. His body and heart thrummed in time with one another, and before he knew what he was doing he had Marvelous braced up against the bulkhead. Marvelous' body caved in a huge sigh and he arched against Joe.

“I love you,” Joe said, because it was true and because he needed to feel a little less wicked for what he was about to do.

He kissed down Marvelous' body, ignoring the hands playing on his shoulders, and hooked his arms behind Marvelous' knees. He moved them both in one smooth motion: Marvelous up, and Joe _in_.

“A-ah! Joe!” Marvelous' legs snapped tight around Joe's hips, holding him fast. He really was strong.

Joe couldn't make sound out of the sensation, not even with Marvelous trembling and clenching around the full length of his cock and digging his nails into his shoulder blades. If he did, he'd lose control utterly or risk asking Marvelous if he was all right.

And Marvelous was clearly all right. Though he was panting and shuddering, his face was set in a triumphant grin that radiated warmth and joy. One of his hands wandered up to the back of Joe's head, playing in his loose hair as if he needed encouragement.

He didn't. He gripped Marvelous' hips hard to hold him in place while he pumped into him. It proved a good technique, because Marvelous' legs lost a great deal of strength once Joe started to move. What started as soft whining sounds grew into cries that made Joe grateful for the thick walls space travel necessitated. And each one made Joe's heart shudder, drove him forward, eroded the gentle caution he'd used with Marvelous up to this point.

The pleasure of Marvelous' body tense and quivering against and around him did nothing to slow him, of course. It stole his breath so bad it felt like his feet might leave the ground.

“Harder... harder...” Marvelous pleaded between moans and jabbed his heels into the small of Joe's back.

Soon every thrust sent Marvelous' body bouncing up and Joe's breath rushing out of his lungs. Joe had to close his eyes tight and bite down on his lip to keep his head clear, but Marvelous didn't bother. The scream he belted out a few moments later surprised Joe less than the hot wash of cum between their jostling bodies that accompanied it. Joe brought himself off in a couple more frantic pumps, whining behind closed lips as his knees threatened to buckle.

They were both shivering and gulping breaths. Joe struggled to take it all in, especially the sweetest part: Marvelous' hot, wet face pressed grinning into the crook of his neck.

\---

Joe dumped a bucket of water from the tub over Marvelous' foamy head, and Marvelous shook it off like a dog. The colorful suds raced swirling to the drain at the center of the room to be joined by more when Joe doused him again. He shook harder this time, and laughed when Joe sputtered at the soap thrown in his face.

For the past few days, Marvelous had traded his post-dinner baths for post-sex baths. So far, the change pleased him.

“That's gotta be enough, right?” Marvelous asked, resting his arms on the edge of the tub. Joe splashed him straight in the face. “Hey!”

“Yeah, that's enough.” Joe reached over to muss his hair. Marvelous let him do what he wanted, spellbound for a second by the sight of Joe with his hair down, softened by the vapor choking the room, pink from the bath. “Get in and let me comb it.”

Marvelous stepped in and settled in what had become his usual place tucked between Joe's knees. “It's wet.”

“And you tangled it up playing puppy, now come here.” Joe looped his arms around Marvelous and pulled him back before plucking the comb off the edge of the tub. “When I offered to wash your hair I didn't know it would be like shampooing a dog.”

Marvelous smiled and let Joe go to work. The water was that perfect just-barely-too-hot, he was tired and sore in the sweetest way, and the gentle touch and swish of Joe's fingers and the teeth of the comb working through his hair made it easy to just float and doze.

“I love you, too, for what it's worth,” Marvelous said, very belatedly.

Joe tucked Marvelous' hair behind his ear. “It's worth plenty,” he said. “At least as much as you are.”

Marvelous chuckled. “Me and my unlimited reward.”

“Yup.”

Happy silence followed, broken only by the trickle of water over the edges of the bathtub.

“Tomorrow's gonna be hard,” Joe said. It didn't ring of anxiety or warning, just acceptance.

“Yeah. The last time's coming around, whether we're ready or not.”

“You scared?”

“Nah.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have the flu and my ability to emote after marathon-writing this is severely compromised BUT! the next chapter, to be posted on 2/15, is the last chapter. Hopefully I will have other surprises also. Until then!


	18. Chapter 18

They slept straight through the night and into the quiet, snowy morning that followed. Even with battle preparations overtaking the upper deck, the overall atmosphere was a placid one.

“Okay! And! Pull!”

Even Gai's enthused shouting seemed muted, muffled by the falling snow. It would have been easy, on any other day, to just give in and be lazy. Instead, they'd been up since before dawn training their threads to catch and cut. Making cat's cradles like Luka had, in massive scale.

The dummy – a mess of mop handles and clothes Doc wasn't keen on patching anymore – burst to shreds when the thread circle closed around it. No one rejoiced. They'd wasted several other enemy stand-ins already, and the process of forming the circle took a toll on them each time.

It all looked so simple on the surface, but the line-around-line-over-line formation called for concentration Joe wouldn't wish on anybody at dawn. The threads had to cross just so, had to remain taut, had to pass through one another at points and catch on others. And each and every pirate needed all that at the forefront of their mind the whole time.

They'd failed more times than they're succeeded. Don even had a little scorecard going, from the pad he and Marvelous never used when they played darts.

“That's enough.” The line Joe shared with Marvelous winked out as the other wished it away and started for the stairs down. “I'm hungry.”

Joe followed without comment. He was hungry, too. By this time, it was likely everyone could use a break. Gai trotted ahead to walk at Marvelous' side, and Marvelous made no attempt to evade him. That brought the smallest smile to Joe's face.

“Are you and Doc both gonna cook, Gai?” Joe asked.

“Don's taking the day off cooking to look for that knockoff guy's ships,” Gai said. “I'm on cook duty until then.”

Joe hummed and raised his eyebrows. “Just Don?”

Gai stopped at the foot of the stairs, straightened himself up like a soldier, and faced Joe. “Yep! Just Don,” he said, though his tone asked, 'Got a problem with that?' “Don is my boyfriend now, so I'm gonna call him Don.”

Joe smirked and slid past Gai to start his workout routine. It was a part of waking up for him, even if circumstances often delayed it.

So why did he not feel up to doing it? His secret playful side suggested it might be because he'd shifted to a pre-sleep workout routine, but no. The snow that creaked in their shoes as they made their way belowdeck belied something he couldn't ignore. Joe wanted to be ready. Just what that was wasn't entirely concrete in his mind, but he could feel it hovering around. Hanging in the air like the clouds that hadn't condensed to snow yet.

He was backsliding. Hyper-vigilant. The thread exercise had provided a diversion, and sleep had clouded it before that. He recognized the feeling. It felt like falling asleep – or trying – in the burnt out shell of a building, his back to the wall. No fire. No light at all. Cold and invisible and alive was better than warm and seen and dead any night.

On the other side of the room, Marvelous lurked in the door to the galley like a cat hoping for scraps. Bright red like the threads.

How did he wind up with this beacon, this lightning rod, after running and hiding and dimming himself so shattered him?

That brightness was, he reasoned, the source of the anxiety. But it wasn't his campfire, extinguished every day at the first hint of dusk. He wanted it to burn bright no matter what, and he was prepared to leap up against anything that might threaten to snuff it.

And there was a smothering, blotting force at work on Earth. One that Doc couldn't manage to fix on the Galleon's instruments.

This, to Joe's old instincts, meant that it could be – and effectively was – everywhere.

“You could stare a little more, or you could come over here.” At some point, Marvelous had turned around and caught Joe staring at him. He leaned on the door jamb.

Joe crossed one ankle over the opposite knee and folded his arms. “Who says I'm not just waiting on breakfast?”

Gai was singing away in the galley. Doc was occupied. The girls were washing up.

There was, effectively, nobody watching.

Except for Marvelous, who watched him very closely in that artificially lazy way that he eyed something he was covertly examining. There was a light behind those careless eyes, a restless spark that could bore into somebody.

Marvelous came over instead. He clapped a hand on Joe's shoulder and left it there until Joe covered it with his own. They both squeezed.

“You wanna play darts instead of doing however many hundred push-ups you were gonna do?” Marvelous asked, jerking his chin at the board on the wall.

Joe looked up but kept his mouth shut.

'If you start something,' the growing voice inside him murmured, 'you won't be ready.'

Marvelous pulled on the collar of his shirt. Harder.

“C'mon. Just until breakfast. I'm bored.”

Joe didn't rise right away. It wasn't even out of stubbornness, though he couldn't be sure Marvelous realized that with all the yanking he did. In time, he did get up and the proximity to Marvelous started to wear away at his anxieties. He couldn't forget the looming threat, but he could forget to worry so hard that nothing got done.

\---

“It's good to eat food from Earth again, huh?” Gai crammed another fork of salad into his mouth.

It was, to Marvelous' surprise. The differences were slight, but they were there. Plenty of people grew pumpkins in space, but soup made with those pumpkins was different. They weren't fed water with the same mix of minerals you'd find on Earth, for instance, and that did stand out in the odd swallow of soup. And Marvelous ate a lot of that soup, as much as Doc would ladle out for him. It was cold outside, after all.

“There's a holiday here soon, right?” Marvelous asked, pausing to contemplate the fish bones on his plate.

Gai nodded, but his mouth was full. Doc replied for him. “The changing of the calendar year is a big holiday in this part of Earth.”

“We oughtta have a party with a lotta Earth food then.” Marvelous reached for a roll and bit it in half.

Gai swallowed. “Well. People normally visit their families for the new year. That's why I wanted to come back last year.”

“I didn't say nobody's family could come.” Marvelous didn't bother swallowing his food first. “Maybe we can crash there, huh?” He needled Gai with his eyes.

“Ah. Well, that might be a little much for my family.” Gai picked at his salad and offered Marvelous a smile. “The house, you know, it's not that big.”

Luka leaned across the table to grin in Gai's face. “You gonna take Doc?”

“Of course!” Gai puffed his chest out, seemingly oblivious to Doc's red face. “It'd be mean to leave him up here like I don't want him there!”

“And, in a way, the doctor is a part of your family now,” Ahim said.

Now Gai was red. “Yeah. Yep.”

Everyone was taking this marriage thing so seriously. Everyone who brought it up, at least. It made Marvelous' neck itch.

A trill in his coat pocket cut him off before he could call an end to the sweet-talking.

He tried to swallow and suddenly couldn't. He didn't know what his face was doing, but it couldn't be good. Not with just about every living person with that number sitting around him.

One of those people, Luka, dove for his pocket and thieved his Mobirate. Her face was set in a stiff smile and her eyes shone.

“I've got this,” she said, flipping it open. She stepped away to speak. “Start talking.”

The assorted fork-on-plate sounds stopped entirely. Marvelous pulled his face together.

“Ah, I see,” Luka said after the moment passed. “Well, Commander Space-Cop, our captain was busy but he's made time for you.” She thrust the phone in Marvelous' face. “It's for you after all.”

Marvelous took the phone with fingers that felt stiff and made a point of reclining in his chair. It tipped back on its rear legs. “What do you need, old man?”

“Can you pick up Earth broadcasts up there?”

Marvelous decided on the conservative answer. “Within reason.”

“Tune to anything. It's everywhere.”

Marvelous frowned and turned his eyes on Doc, who practically jumped up to go to the console. The poor guy didn't even know what they were doing yet.

“Doc, bring up some TV. Gavan says there's something we gotta see.”

The Gokaigers rose and gathered around Doc. Crowded in like that, their presences weighed heavy on Marvelous for a single stinging moment. They all hummed with a cousin to the anxiety hanging on him, three of them more strongly than the others. Joe, alert and ready to spring. Luka, simmering in an anger Marvelous didn't want to understand. Gai, quietly hurting and wound up with the want to set things right.

It didn't last.

Bigger concerns beamed in through the view screen and smashed that moment to bits.

The feed quality wasn't great. Bars and streaks of color darted and skidded across the frame. But the image was clear enough: Another stage, a blast-leveled stretch of countryside with a Zangyack ship sat dead center to serve as a platform for Nicess Gill and his god.

The sky above was dotted with other ships.

Earthlings, a curious and captive audience, crowded around the edges of the blast zone, just little specks.

Anger, fresh and real, bloomed in Marvelous and swelled and buoyed him. It made it easier to stand without holding himself bolt upright. He could lean on it.

It made it easier to listen and watch from here, where he could do nothing.

“Well, what a stunning turnout!” Nicess Gill's voice blared from the amplifiers in the ship and rolled over the field. “Shocking, but welcome all the same. I suppose it's a little like smoking out insects, isn't it?”

“This guy's got a big mouth to go with those short legs,” Marvelous muttered.

Behind Nicess, Basco stood in his weird new body with his armored arms behind his back. The wind licked his hair up into a curtain that occasionally obscured his smirking face.

While Nicess went on with his address that amounted to nothing, Gavan's voice started calling louder and louder from the earpiece of the phone. Marvelous had forgotten to shut it. He lifted it to his face.

“What are you hollering about?”

“We have a fix on their location.” Gavan's voice took on a clipped tone Marvelous barely recognized. “You know more than we do, so give the word if you're confident we can move out.”

Marvelous' shoulders eased a little. “Sure. Move on out, but stick to the ships. We've got what we need for the jokers on the ground.”

A pause. Marvelous started to close the phone.

“Roger that. Do what you must.”

“Don't have a choice. Bye.”

Marvelous let the phone drop back into his pocket and turned his attention back to Nicess Gill crowing about his god. And about his assured position as the emperor of Earth, and, naturally-

“The new center of the resurrected Zangyack Empire! Your little wet dirt ball of a planet! Aren't you proud?”

Now, Basco stepped forward. What happened next was a foregone conclusion, at least to Marvelous. No one like Basco could stand a partnership longer than it suited his very specific needs.

Whatever it was Basco needed, it wasn't some half-pint plundering the universe right out from under him and thinking he could welch on the deal.

Basco had his god's body.

He had his armada of zealots.

All he had to deal with right now, most logically, was the guy holding it out of his grasp.

And so he did.

Marvelous' stomach didn't even twist up when Basco grabbed Nicess from behind, spun him around, and spitted him through the chest with a blade spun from the same threads that made up his god's body.

If anything, it eased.

Things were proceeding as forecast.

Gai gasped and the whole room tightened up around Marvelous. He couldn't imagine anybody being surprised.

Nicess tumbled off the ship and into the dirt and Basco strode forward to take his place.

He was smiling that warm and winning smile. Marvelous recognized it even through the haze and static. Even at the cautious distance kept by the camera.

Marvelous' gut seized up when Basco's eyes met the lens. They smiled with his mouth, turned up and convincing. But not to Marvelous. Not anymore.

Basco spoke his next words to the camera, even if the ship boomed them all over.

“Marvey.”

The bodies around Marvelous drew in closer. When had they moved to surround him and not the console?

“I have a proposition for you. It's very simple. I know you're hearing me, even if you aren't listening.” Basco was quiet for a second, as if he expected Marvelous to speak. “Come see me. I don't expect you to show up alone, but I will. I figure you need all the advantages you can get, even now. No Phantoms. Just me. You can bring Blue Boy, if you really want. You can bring everybody. But bear in mind, this isn't an offer. You can either show up today, or I'll blast holes out of this mud ball until the whole simpering populace is ready to hand you over to me. Just you, by the way. Company's a provision I make in the trust that you'll happily obey me.”

“Cut it off,” Joe said. Doc didn't argue, and neither did Marvelous.

“All right.” Marvelous jammed his hands in his pockets and wove through the others to crash into his chair. He leaned back. “Doc, call Gavan back and get the location. If the bastard's so eager to die again, we can't keep him waiting.”

Marvelous was just as eager to kill him again.

\---

“Jetman! It's Jetman!” Gai bounced up and down at the porthole and tried to wave them all over.

Marvelous cocked his head. He and the others paused on the steps down to the gangway. It was time to disembark. “Hah? What about them?”

Gai whined and flapped his arms. “It's Jetman, you know, you met one of them! They're probably here with Gavan-san!” As if to illustrate his point, something screamed past the porthole, headed for the banks of ships circling Basco's staging area. It was just a white blur to Marvelous.

“Good,” Marvelous said. He started down again and the others followed. “Those ships'll need wiping out sooner or later. They can save us the trouble of doing it.”

“I bet the other teams are coming, too!” Gai bounded after them. “You see, right?”

Marvelous rolled his eyes and sped up. He let the question hang until they reached the gangway. “Can't see a lot with 'em going by that fast.”

Gai made an indignant noise that the sound of the outside air rushing in as the lifelines dropped nearly drowned out. “Earth's with us! You see, right? He couldn't make them come and get you if he tried.”

“As if there was any doubt,” Joe said, before Marvelous could open his mouth. He had that tiny smirk on his face, the one Marvelous couldn't help returning. “You save somebody, they never forget it. Not even a whole planet of somebodies.”

“Sure don't.” Marvelous took up a lifeline and poised to leap down. Madness crept into his smile. “Here we go.”

The lines carried them down fast. The cold wind stung his face with ice crystals. In the distance, beam fire cut hot through the winter air, and explosions followed. Engines screamed. Triumphant calls from below drew nearer by the second. Marvelous, for the short time it took them to descend, felt like the only quiet thing on Earth. The resolve in his heart was almost like comfort.

This was, once and for all, the last time.

His boots hit the hull of the Zangyack battleship and the world went quiet again. The air battle was a distant thunder and the crowds shrunk back, silent. His crew stood fanned out at his sides.

He wanted a hand on his back.

“Well, you've exceeded my expectations.” Basco shouted from the stern of the ship and set to striding their way. “Looks like you took my offer to bring your friends a little liberally.”

He looked weird, which was good. Armored up in bright red and gold the way his monstrous form had been, he was only truly recognizable from the neck up. And Marvelous had never been afraid of the monster.

“Afraid they invited themselves along,” Marvelous said. He flipped his Mobirate open. “You can deal with the party crashers yourself after, if you can manage to crawl outta Hell again.”

“Hmph!” Basco stopped himself a few dozen meters away. He unfolded his arms. “Feeling confident, are we? And impatient? Go ahead, then. Do your thing. I'll wait.”

“Gokai Change!”

It took a fraction of a second. There wasn't any time to dwell on how they'd execute whatever they had that counted for a plan. Half the time, though, that was just the way they did things: Charging ahead with the roar of fire ringing around them, side by side. Like pirates.

Basco didn't return the charge. He could afford to wait, throwing red waves off into the air.

The ship had sat for a while with the engines off. It was cooling. The snow was sticking. It kicked up under their boots.

It was a miracle nobody smashed their face on the hull.

Nobody even slipped.

Gokai Yellow closed the gap. Basco flung his arms up to deflect her sabers, and bright points of red light scattered into the air where they met. Green flowed in to join her and Pink fired from afar. When Basco threw Doc off, Gai was there to catch him.

Marvelous wasn't ready to let everyone have a chance at him before he got his licks in. He sprang up and over Doc with his saber held over his head in both fists. Luka fell back from her grapple with Basco as if it was all planned out and Marvelous came crashing down on him. His boots struck Basco's chest and he brought his saber down.

Angry red sparks flew. The snow gave way under Basco's heels. The look of profound shock on his smug face was sweet, even as they both toppled and skidded across the snow-slick metal to plummet to the ground.

Marvelous' shoulder hit the ground first. Basco was already – or still – on his feet when Marvelous managed to spring up. The pain went all the way up his neck and wrapped around his head. It wasn't too bad.

Basco spat that garbage blood of his and grinned with pink teeth.

It was unfair that he got to keep the red blood.

“Come on.” Basco cocked his head back. Like baring his throat was nothing.

Gokai Blue, instead, came down. He sprang off the edge of the ship and dropped behind Basco, boots crunching on the mix of snow and dirt and too-fine rubble. His sabers flashed bright and drove an X into Basco's back before he could turn to deflect it.

And part of Marvelous tried to tell him to run. 'Joe, don't!' It tried to beat its way out of his chest, up the steps of his throat, and out his mouth.

But Joe was precious to him, not fragile. And this wasn't his fight to fight alone.

Marvelous dove for Basco and swept him into the hull of the ship with a kick that took his whole body. He hit with a big, satisfying sound. For a second, he was still, the snow around him scuffed and steamed away to reveal the dirt underneath.

But only for a second.

“Hm.” Basco's head swiveled and his neck crackled. He lifted to his feet. No effort. No show of pain.

He was playing along with them, but Marvelous didn't realize until he was on him. He was still fast. It still hurt like Hell when he batted Marvelous back.

The ship receded in his tumbling vision until it was a distant bulk dotted with red and blue flashes. The fight went on without him. He struggled to right himself and planted his feet hard, scrabbling with his hands until he came to a stop.

A big blast rocked the ship. It was just fireworks to Marvelous at this distance, but he recognized the way Final Wave streaked through the air well enough.

He sprang out of his crouch and tore off in the direction of the calamity, running into the wind. It shrieked around him, threatened to suck the heat out of him.

Doc was nowhere in sight when Marvelous rejoined the fray, but a spray of duel pistol fire from above revealed his location back on top of the ship pretty quick. Good. Spread out. Make the bastard work for it.

He found Basco taking rounds to his back while Ahim kept him busy. She couldn't so much as lift a sword when they brought her on, but here she was going blow for blow with a god. The pride that swelled in Marvelous drove him forward.

“Hey!” He fired a shot that grazed Basco's ear. Basco whirled around and Gokai Pink fell back. Yellow was elsewhere, as according to the their half-cocked plan, roughly parallel to Pink.

Not that Basco noticed. He'd put his cool and calm face on to turn to Marvelous. He wasn't interested in any of the others, Marvelous figured. He probably still thought this was all about them. The wind picked up again and made swirls in the snow. It caught Marvelous' coat and Basco's hair.

A skinny line of red ran from underneath Basco's hair, down the side of his neck.

“Oh, don't tell me you're partial to that one, too,” Basco said. His eyes strayed from the barrel of Marvelous' gun to his face. He didn't make a move. “I'd never have suspected.”

“I'm not here to talk,” Marvelous said, knowing Basco would talk anyway. That was the point.

Gai wasn't the fastest out of all of them, but that wasn't his job. His job was to be forgotten about just long enough.

“Interesting!” Basco sidestepped and Marvelous mirrored the motion.

“You think I'd waste time killing you?”

Basco's mouth quirked. “Can't wait, huh?”

“Nope.”

The quirk spread into a full smile. “I'm afraid I don't buy that, Marvey. You talk big, but you're pretty small under that coat. And you get attached, don't you? For better or worse.”

They wound their little circle together, their false standoff. Marvelous would keep Basco entertained. Gai would stay forgotten and disregarded.

Until the right time.

He launched past Don, over the side of the ship and into the air. A tight flip brought him into a dive, and Basco did just what Marvelous wanted. He evaded, easily, readily. Gai followed, Marvelous kept his distance with his pistol at the ready, and Doc held position.

Gai didn't meet Basco's slashes and jabs. He evaded in the broadest way possible, ducking and circling him over and over. And the whole time Marvelous watched him real close through the spray of snow and sparks. Little by little, he got closer to the fray. The others stayed out of it. They had to wait for enough time, for enough revolutions.

And for Basco to get bored.

For him to lash out .

When he did, when he cocked his woven wire sword back and sent red power coursing into it, Marvelous was ready. He ran headlong at Gai from behind.

“Gai!”

“Right!”

Gai leaped up and Marvelous darted in to take his place, saber raised. Gai's boots thumped on his shoulders and Gai launched up and over Basco. Marvelous held Basco's attention, bearing down on him where their blades met and clashed. He could feel the energy rolling off them heating the air, humming up the bones in his arms.

Gai nailed the landing and fixed Basco in place with the shaft of his spear whipped around and locked under his chin. Marvelous let himself fall back.

Can you strangle a god?

“Y'know, I've been meaning to tell you something,” Gai said over Basco's snarls. “You're _super obnoxious._ ”

“You little worm!”

A red spark cut through the pale scenery and burned a hot red line from Doc's hand to Gai's. It made a dozen laps around Basco first, each one tighter. The line cinched around him and pinned his arms. His sword unraveled and dissipated.

“Got you, you freaky jerk!” Doc crowed from up on the ship.

Marvelous couldn't match his enthusiasm. He was, for the moment, only relieved.

Only for a moment. Until he realized that Basco had gone still and stopped his spitting fit short. His head tipped forward and what his hair revealed of his face far too slack for a man bound up, he looked almost comfortable.

His shoulders twitched a little. Marvelous sneered.

“My, my, how creative.” The words creaked out. Maybe you could strangle a god, but it didn't seem to bother him too much. He snapped his head back and barked out a laugh. “Very creative. But not smart.”

Marvelous braced himself. “Gai, get off him.”

“Oh, don't bother,” Basco said. A brighter, angrier red rippled up his body like hungry flames that consumed nothing. He centered his gaze on Marvelous. “Marvey, I'm rethinking my offer. You were, perhaps, a little too greedy about it. I said that your little friends could come along, but I don't recall saying they could play.”

The flames glowed hotter, seared white in an instant, and Gai yelped. Marvelous started to move, but he'd hardly got a foot off the ground before the energy around Basco exploded out, shredding Gai's improvised net and flinging him backward. It rushed out in a howling wave that blasted the snow away. The same wave crashed into Marvelous, wrapped around him, drowned him in pain, crushed the air out of him. He coughed. Black spots appeared in his vision and expanded.

His bare face struck the bare ground.

It still hurt when he came back around. Must not have taken long.

He was on his side, looking straight on across the naked ground at a bank of fog rolling in.

No.

Fog wasn't stationary. Fog didn't reach up to the sky and arc overhead. Marvelous blinked and brought the world into focus. He was on one side of a rippling wall of energy – a dome of it, his brain informed him when he rolled onto his back – and everyone else was on the other side, silenced despite their roaring mouths and fists pounding on the barrier.

Well. Almost everybody else.

“Marvey.”

Marvelous sat up. He touched his cheek and found blood on his bare fingers. Red couldn't withstand the blast that erected the barrier. Somehow, only Marvelous remained.

“Get up.” The voice came from behind, pointed, impatient.

Marvelous leaped up. His body protested. His right hand tightened on the grip of his gun.

This was all so calculated, what with everybody flung to the edge of the dome where they couldn't help. But not so far that they couldn't watch.

“You satisfied?” Marvelous asked.

Basco stepped closer, eyes sweeping him up and down. “Never. Marvey, why do you think I let you live?”

“Figure you're a crappy shot and I got lucky.” Marvelous held his ground.

“Hmm, but what about in the moment?” Basco pressed. There was no mockery in his voice. “You thought I spared you, didn't you?”

Marvelous scoffed, but a chill crept in through his scalp and flowed down his back. So Basco still had access to all the bullshit that monster pulled out of his brain. Figured. “You make this little privacy bubble so you could get closure on that or what?”

“I did want to make some cursory attempt at negotiation,” Basco said. He smiled, but his eyes stayed cold. “You believed that, didn't you? And you called me once. What did you want? Answers, my head on a plate?” His smile twisted sharply. “Sweet little Marvey.”

“Shut your mouth.” Marvelous hooked his finger on the trigger of his pistol.

Basco chortled and circled him. Marvelous tracked him with his eyes, turning when necessary. “Don't worry, they can't hear a word.”

Basco reached over with his naked human hand on the end of his monster's arm, and Marvelous didn't jump back until those fake-skin fingers touched the wrist above his pistol. He snapped his hand back and reeled back a few steps, the barrel level with Basco's face. His left hand, he kept on his hip. A fire of panic raged briefly in his chest, but he didn't let his face betray it.

That didn't stop Basco from laughing. “Really, Marvey. It's a simple offer, and you're just gonna get a sore arm holding that up until you get up the guts to shoot me. Not that it would do you any good.”

Marvelous didn't speak, didn't lower his gun. In the time it took Basco to speak up again, Marvelous read the question behind his eyes.

'You missed me, didn't you?'

It pierced him like that offer in the forest on that distant planet had: Start over. It stung because he had, once. That was the Hell of losing anybody, even somebody better off lost. In the weeks after the betrayal, he'd clean and bandage the wound on his arm every day, wish he didn't have to do it himself, and remember how it got there in the first place. Then, finally, he'd hate himself a little. And he'd hate himself for missing regular dinners and other voices, specific voices, heard down the stairs and up the hall.

It was true. He had missed Basco. Maybe not as hard as he'd hated him, still hated him, but it had struck him in quiet moments, and in the moments that followed those moments he hated himself for attaching the same tender feeling to Basco as he did to AkaRed.

“You're thinking about it, right?” Basco asked. “I'm not going to give you a lot of time, you know. You've been a real drag on my plans for a long time, Marvey, and I'm being very generous right now.”

Marvelous looked past Basco's shoulder at the crowd gathered on the other side of the field. He recognized some of the people howling with their muted voices, but his crew stood out. He watched Gai bowl himself over with recoil trying to blast a hole in the dome and the others rush over to help him back up. And he laughed. And he refocused his gaze on Basco.

What an idiot Basco was, trying to talk to a dead man who lived in dreams.

“Nah.” He squeezed the trigger and snaked his left hand into his coat pocket. “Coulda wished your ass back if I wanted you so bad.”

The shot sped off and he let the gun drop so he could get his key out.

“Gokai Change!”

They clashed and ricocheted off one another, each thrown far back and sent skidding on his heels. Basco, his face all but split in half in an unnatural grin, barreled straight for Marvelous to catch him under the chin with a hard forearm strike. Marvelous saw sparks and flipped over into the dirt.

He wasn't down long. It hurt to draw air, but he wasn't down long. He rolled for his gun and took a boot in the side getting there. But he got his gun. He fired off a round that sparked off Basco's shoulder and into the barrier. It sounded like a bell underwater.

“This is a little pathetic, don't you think?” Basco asked. He held an arm out at his side and called his wound wire sword from the palm of his hand.

The dome clouded over and turned an opaque gray, the faces beyond lost. Somehow, the dim winter light remained.

Marvelous fired again, but Basco was gone. Or, rather, he was closer. He flashed closer, closer, closer, in the space of a second, until pain exploded across Marvelous' chest and threw him to the ground. He sucked in a breath and spun, catching Basco's feet with his own to trip him up and bring him down. He hit the ground hard and sprang back up on feet too light for his armored bulk.

Rising again, Marvelous could feel himself getting slower already. Or Basco was getting faster. Or Basco was just as fast as he'd been before and he was done screwing around.

Whatever.

“You could have enjoyed a great deal of freedom with me, you know.” Basco swept Marvelous' feet out from under him and pinned his wrist to the dirt with a heavy boot. Marvelous, in a moment of instinctive panic, decided he'd rather have a functioning arm than a gun. “That appeals to you. I know it does. I know you, because I know myself very well.”

“Shut up.”

“It's true.” Basco said this almost gently as he stooped to recover Marvelous' gun and fling it into the distance. He took his foot off Marvelous' wrist and turned him over with a hard kick in the ribs. Marvelous snarled and pulled himself up in an angry huddle. “I don't like compromise, either, Marvey. I just understand it's the cost of doing business sometimes. But it's not always necessary.”

Marvelous stood, a hand over the throbbing spot on his side. He scoffed. “Don't trick yourself into thinking I'll buy into that 'we're not so different,' line.”

“A black hole's just a very experienced sun,” Basco said, coolly. He lashed out with his sword, let it leave his hand and travel like a javelin into Marvelous' shoulder. It didn't pierce him, but it knocked his transformation out and sent him crashing to the ground. Basco planted a knee on his chest and grabbed the bend of his jaw. “You know I'm playing with you, Marvey. I can do whatever I want, kill you if I wanna, and I'm just being generous. Especially now.”

Marvelous breathed. He told himself he wasn't afraid.

It was so quiet inside the dome, and so still. His breath just drifted up to break around Basco's face. No wind.

“You understand, don't you?” More weight on his chest. Less breath to take. “Thanks to Emperor Deadmeat, I've got the whole universe ready to fall into my hand.”

Marvelous' own hand flexed, wanting his gun. Or something else.

“Got it all worked out, huh?” he asked, the words catching before they made it through his smirking mouth. “Emperor Basco. And what would I be?”

“Nothing, now. Dead. My patience is spent and I've got plenty even if I miss out on just how fun it would be to make you see things my way. Compromises.”

“Compromise ain't for me.” Marvelous tried to breathe deep. His hand fell open. “Besides, I got plenty you don't that's in my favor.”

“Oh?” Basco leaned very close and dug his nails into Marvelous' throat. “Such as what, Marvey?”

“For starters,” Marvelous said, looking sidelong at the gray wall. He'd have to think. Just think. “A lifeline!”

The line that appeared was just that: A taut line between two points, no slack. It practically hummed with tension.

Its red light pulsed.

It thrummed brighter, dimmer, brighter with the beat of his heart.

A heart that wasn't alone.

He pulled, hard, so hard his whole body twisted with it and drove Basco's knee against his chest.

The line retracted. Joe broke through the barrier first, the grayness splitting around him, but he came with a chain: Ahim snagged on his line and Luka at the end of that point, Don tangled up in that and Gai yowling in triumph at the very end. The dome sealed itself behind them, but this was enough. Basco leaped up off Marvelous to intercept them, but the damage was done. They soared past him, slung like rounds by the tension in their threads. They were a stream of colors that scattered as soon as their feet touched the earth.

Clusters wouldn't do the job here. Neither would swords or guns, for once.

Doc and Gai's line caught Basco first, wound around his sword arm when Doc dashed and flipped around him. He caught it his hand and yanked Doc to grab him by the throat. Marvelous changed and ran in. But Doc didn't need him. Gai was there – or, really, meters away – to pull on his end of the line and set the thread in Basco's arm like a hook in the mouth of a fish.

Streams of black, oily smoke rose and Basco dropped Doc, who darted off. When Basco tried for the thread again, it passed through his hand.

Ahim and Luka clotheslined him, and he staggered. The line bit into his chest, drawing an angry red streak. They looped around and cinched it tight before streaking off in opposite directions. His arms pinned, Basco thrashed and spat angry nonsense at them.

“Think you're proving something, don't you?” Basco snapped, his hateful eyes burning into Marvelous. “Sweet little Marvey and all his friends!” He breathed hard and the thread biting into his armor hissed. “It's so precious. That they're gonna overlook everything. For now.”

Joe was a blue blur when he darted in from the edge of the dome.

His thread – their thread – he looped around Basco's neck. Basco, twice trapped, could only kick out at him and snarl.

Marvelous and Joe passed him, threads in hand, on opposite sides.

Above them, the dome roiled black and gray and bright white like the sky in a terrible storm.

Marvelous positioned himself at the opposite side of the barrier. Gai and Luka, their own tether stretched tight between their mirrored points, flanked him. The six of them made evenly spaced points all along the barrier.

The false sky settled.

It gained color.. Marvelous only knew because he saw the blue blooming behind Joe, watched it arc up overhead joined by green and pink. Gai's arc was a lustrous glitter storm, Luka's like the sun's halo. He couldn't see his own until it became a part of the sky.

Basco was quiet now, his throat constricted, and distant besides, but Marvelous could feel the hate rolling off him. The hate, and the hunger, the terrible waves that had threatened to drown Marvelous even after Basco was dead.

Something like serenity settled in Marvelous' heart, a resolve as still as the air within the barrier and as vibrant as the sky they'd created.

'I wanna make it better, and I can't, and I'm sorry.'

Marvelous could have made it better, once. They all had that option, one way or another. Wish the Zangyack away, grow up on his mama's ship, never know AkaRed or Basco or anybody else. Or wish for Basco the friend. Or wish to forget, like he'd half-managed for years.

But they hadn't, he hadn't. They wouldn't.

Marvelous cocked his arm back. Joe did the same. They all did. The threads tightened into singing cords that threw off sparks so bright they were almost white.

This was who and where they were.

“Gokai-”

Fate had brought them to this point, even if it tossed them on the rocks to get them there. Even if it left them in ruins to be hastily rebuilt. They had faith in that despite it all.

The colors overhead whirled. Dust kicked up.

The ring that made up the barrier's outer rim glowed the same sparking red as the threads.

“Wind Rose-”

And anybody who tried to challenge that, phantom or ghost or god or not? They'd blow them away.

Six more pulls, harder. Three threads screaming hot and cutting. The roaring wind, practically a cyclone.

“Crusher!”

The god body that housed Marvelous' nightmares threw off plumes of black smoke that practically bubbled into the air. The threads glowed like hot steel where they met his body before they disappeared underneath the crackling surface.

There was no blood – not that Marvelous could make out at that distance – when the threads closed their loops and Basco's body went to pieces. Lashing black threads and blacker smoke were all that remained in the instant before the red ring came crashing toward the barrier's center. It whisked the smoke and vapor away, leaving nothing.

The barrier popped like a soap bubble.

Marvelous fell backward and Red flickered away.

Thick pats of snow, previously held up by the dome, came wafting down with smaller, newer flakes.

The air smelled cold and clean and new.

He hurt bad.

Joe was at his side first. Just like always.

“Marvelous!” Joe grabbed his hand. The thread was gone. He hauled Marvelous' head into his lap. “Damn it, don't die now!”

The others ran in from their positions. Marvelous had to smile at the deja vu.

“Shaddup.” He reached up for Joe's – not Blue's – ponytail and pulled him gently down. He leaned up at the same time, sore body be damned. “M'just tired.”

Joe's lips tasted like sand and dust, the same still-swirling dust that Marvelous blamed the stinging in his eyes on. Joe slipped and hand into his hair and held him up, clung to him.

Marvelous was too tired, to spent, and too preoccupied to take full notice of the gathered Sentai and Earthling bystanders swarming the scene with cheers. All he could think, at the moment, was it was very showy and he liked it.

\---

Dinner wouldn't be ready for another hour or so, which for once suited Marvelous just fine. He'd managed to find the sole spot of warmth in the house and wasn't too keen on leaving it. That it happened to be directly underneath a table changed his affection for it exactly none. Gai kept saying he'd catch a cold if he fell asleep underneath it, but that made the exact opposite of sense.

And it was still snowing outside. Weird for the region to see so much snow, or so Gai told him. Marvelous didn't care. As long as the snow wasn't falling on or exactly adjacent to him, it was fine. It made the world outside quiet and bright.

The inside world was quiet, too, as Earth homes went. The Ichijouji house was older and bigger than its neighbors.

Ichijouji. Marvelous closed his eyes and rolled onto his aching back to warm his belly better. The kotatsu heater hummed.

Gavan wasn't Gavan's only name. Gavan came to scrape him off the ground after the fight, but Retsu Ichijouji was letting them crash in his house on New Year's Eve. His house on Earth with his wife from space cooking Earth food for an Earth holiday.

He would have laughed if it didn't hurt his ribs.

The sound of movement behind him opened his eyes. Joe's face hovered over his from where he'd crouched by the table.

“What'd Gai tell you about going to sleep on the floor?” Joe asked. He set something that went 'tink' on the tabletop.

A plate? Marvelous' ears pricked. “You think I'm gonna catch a cold from being warm? Give me a break.”

“Stranger things have happened on Earth.” Joe pulled up one of the little legless chairs arranged around the table and pulled Marvelous' head onto his knee. “And I'm not gonna babysit you if you wind up sick 'cause you didn't want to wear your coat inside.”

“Whatcha bring me a snack for, then?” Marvelous peered up as much as he could without leaving his cozy spot on Joe's lap. Cake!

“Cake's for people who sit upright at the table.”

“Bah, it can wait.” Marvelous settled back down. Joe put fingers through his hair and they sat in silence for a bit. Gavan's voice, rendered indistinct by distance and caution, worked its way down the halls from the kitchen. He was a kitchen lurker like Marvelous, apparently.

“Gai leave already, then?” Marvelous asked.

“Nope!” Gai's voice piped from the doorway as loud and chipper as always. Marvelous just about jumped. Gai arranged himself at the opposite side of the table, all cozied up. And stealing a slice of Marvelous' space. “Don and I are gonna meet my mom at the shrine in the morning.”

Doc joined them at that moment, tucking his legs under the table without a word.

Marvelous grumbled and rearranged himself. By now his toes were in serious dangerous of exposure to the cold air. “Yeah, have a good time standing in line in the cold.”

“It was decided that we would all go.” Ahim slipped into the room, tray of tea and snacks in hand and followed by Luka. “The people of Earth are owed a show of solidarity and respect after what's happened.”

“And I don't deserve to rest?” Marvelous growled when Luka kicked his legs out of the way to make room for her own. Ahim took up less space, but he was still effectively squeezed out of his nest. He shimmied up to sit upright – sort of – and recline against Joe.

“You can relax all you want after,” Gai said. He grabbed a little pack of crackers off the tray and picked it open. “Technically you're not supposed to do any work or cleaning or cooking or anything on New Year's, so you can get away with being lazy. I mean, except for going around to visit and stuff. And my family breaks the cooking rule a lot. But! For the most part, it's a good time to be lazy.”

“Sounds good to me,” Joe said. He draped Marvelous' coat, rescued from where it'd been tossed on the couch, over Marvelous' shoulders and pressed his chest to his back. “I could stand to sleep for a week at least.”

“Yeah, just don't drool on my shoulder.” Marvelous snuggled back against Joe and reached for his plate of cake. “Me, I'm fine with being awake for this.”

“It looked like you were falling asleep under the table,” Doc said, quietly, as he poured tea for Gai.

Gai gasped and almost flung tea in Luka's face. She socked him in the arm. “You can't fall asleep on the floor, you'll get sick!”

“Whatever, gimme tea.”

“Ah, right, sure.”

The voices down the hall came closer. Marvelous leaned back on Joe and spooned cake into his mouth. Joe's arms more than made up for the loss of his cozy space to interlopers. The general haze of warmth in the room from warm bodies and steaming tea helped, too. And he had cake, the soft and fluffy kind with cream and fruits in it that Earthlings liked a lot.

And he had Joe.

Everybody had somebody, and they all had each other.

Outside, the snow continued to fall and coat the tarps and barricades erected over the results of Zangyack's latest failed attempt on Earth.

Chatter chased the quiet away and food smells filled the house as a new year drew ever nearer.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that, against all my expectations throughout the writing of this thing, is the end.
> 
> I'm seriously struggling for something to say beyond, "Holy shit, it's over even though it took me eight hours to work on it yesterday."
> 
> This story's been important to me. It's taken me through a time that, without something to lure me out of my skull and make writing into something fun again, could have easily been very dark.
> 
> Anyone who's ever commented, who's left a little Self Esteem Credit in the form of kudos, whatever, you've been super important. If you were ever scared about feeling like a stalker or a weirdo for commenting, please never feel like that again because your words let writers know they're being heard and successfully communicating. Even slapping the Like button in the face accomplishes so much in terms of justifying externalizing all this. 
> 
> I extend special thanks to my pre-readers Gabi and Goose, the latter of whom has endured a unique kind of torture throughout the development of this story. You've been my cheerleaders, and you're each talented in your own rights in ways that put me to shame. Goose, without your unguarded enthusiasm and love for your Things, I wouldn't have had the courage to make Gai truly himself in this. Gabi, your pitch perfect understanding of horror and the importance of grounded storytelling in stories outside the realms of realism informed the inception of this idea so deeply I can't even begin.
> 
> Special thanks also to aquabluejay, who's provided entertainment and emotional support through email and may yet provide something more that I can't specify here. You've been a bright reminder of my ability to connect with people since you offered to do a dramatic reading of another story of mine, and I want nothing but continued growth in your own projects.
> 
> And thanks, generally, to anyone who's read this far. I don't know when or if I'll do a long fan story like this again, but if you're inclined to keep up with my work I invite you to visit [my blog](http://barefootmind.com/) from time to time. Tonight I start rewriting my original novel in full, and next week I start work on a tokusatsu-inspired BL serial I'll be posting on Wattpad and my blog. If none of that interests you, I guess you can watch my AO3 profile for activity.
> 
> Thank you all so much. You have made this story as possible as I have.


End file.
